Eddie Huang’s TIFF Doc ‘Vice Is Broke’ Takes Shot at Company and How Media Has Evolved: ‘I Really Want To Do the Vice Scripted Show’
variety.comDaniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic The title of Eddie Huang’s new documentary says it all: “Vice Is Broke.” The media company that defined counterculture sensibilities (while accepting investment from mega-corporations, too) filed for bankruptcy in 2023.
And Huang — the multitalented author, on-camera personality, and documentarian — began his new film with a grievance. First, Huang says in an interview, he had a personal falling-out with controversial Vice executive Shane Smith, the face of the brand and the mastermind of the company’s scaling-up beyond what was sustainable. (Huang declines to go into the nature of the offense.) Then, he noticed that he was owed money for his on-camera work for Vice, including the TV series “Huang’s World,” in which he traveled and experienced other cultures in the style of his role model and late friend, Anthony Bourdain. “I had been asking for an accounting since 2018,” Huang says. “They kicked the can down the road and never paid me my residuals.
The bankruptcy was the moment I was like, ‘I’ve amassed all of this information over the last few years just on personal curiosity.’” Huang, with the leverage of the money owed him, negotiated out of his non-disclosure agreement; this film is his attempt to present what it was like inside the convoluted world of Vice.
The company, as Huang explains, began its life as a style magazine dominated by Gavin McInnes, whose willingness to go anywhere in print led him to far-right provocation; he, later, became the founder of the far-right organization the Proud Boys.
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