Eddie Huang came to 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 present with his new documentary ‘Vice Is Broke’. The film serves as both an ode to the anarchic spirit of Vice and the generations of aggressive, barrier-breaking, break-shit journalists and filmmakers it employed, and a darker look at the greed and questionable ethics that helped make the film has been sent to Chapter 11. And Huang, who says he reneged on a non-disclosure agreement he signed in exchange for unpaid residuals, made it clear that Vice, or what’s left of it, isn’t too happy with what he’s created.
“Their lawyers are still trying to fight us on this movie,” Huang said during a question-and-answer session after the documentary’s premiere at TIFF Lightbox Cinema. He added that Shane Smith, the colorful and controversial vice co-founder whose bad reputation helped attract hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from media companies like Disney and Discovery, declined his requests for an interview. Huang made it clear that he did not approve of Smith’s leadership style and 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 have sent legal letters. You know, Shane is, in so many words, a coward. He abandoned all his friends and colleagues.”
Huang said he spent $380,000 of his own money on the documentary, which celebrates Vice’s messy 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 (although Huang notes that Vice tended to dwell on the conflict and violence in those countries, rather than highlighting the positive aspects of their culture and the people who live there).
“Do I regret what happened with Vice?” said Huang. “Yes, I think it’s very sad what happened to that company, because it was a very special place for young people to express their artistic work.”
In addition to Smith, Huang also explores the role that Gavin McInnes, one of Vice’s co-founders, played in establishing the company’s subversive style, as well as the way McInnes’ far-right views sometimes seeped into reporting. McInnes left Vice in 2008 and went on to found the Proud Boys, an all-male, neo-fascist organization. He agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, spending his time defending freedom of speech, but also making dick jokes and racist comments.
“You can be a man of free speech, you can be a man who has the right to bear arms, but you also have to measure ultimate freedom and theoretical ideas about freedom by hurting people,” Huang said of McInnes. “What is the purpose of your art if you hurt people more than you uplift or educate them?”
