"Their lawyers are still trying to fight us"

Eddie Huang came to the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday night to applaud and praise Vice.

The author, chef and former host of the bankrupt media 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, boundary-pushing, groundbreaking journalists and filmmakers it employed, as well as a darker look at the greed and questionable ethics that helped it fall into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And Huang, who says he was forgiven an NDA 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.

More from Variety

“Their lawyers are still trying to fight us with this film,” 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-boy 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 does not condone Smith’s leadership style or his behavior after Vice filed for bankruptcy and agreed to be acquired by Fortress Investment Group and a consortium of investors.

“He threatened legal action,” Huang said. “They sent legal letters. You know, Shane is, to put it bluntly, a coward. He has abandoned all of his friends and colleagues.”

Huang said he spent $380,000 of his own money on the documentary, which chronicles Vice’s humble beginnings as a free magazine offering sex tips and provocative photo shoots to its evolution into a global media organization focused on hotbeds like Sierra Leone and Liberia (though Huang notes that Vice has tended to focus on the conflict and violence in those countries, rather than highlighting the positive aspects of their cultures and the people who live there).

“Do I regret what happened to Vice?” Huang said. “Yes, I think it’s really sad what happened to that company, because it was a very special place for young people to show their artistic work.”

In addition to Smith, Huang also examines the role that Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes played in establishing the company’s subversive style, and the way McInnes’s far-right views sometimes seeped into its reporting. McInnes left Vice in 2008 and founded the Proud Boys, an all-male, neo-fascist organization. He agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, and has spent his time defending free speech as well as making jokes and racist remarks.

“You can be a man who is for freedom of speech, you can be a man who is for the right to bear arms, but you also have to measure ultimate freedom and theoretical ideas about freedom with hurting people,” Huang said of McInnes. “What is the purpose of your art if you hurt people more than you lift them up or educate them?”

Best of the variety

Related Posts