Aside from Buzzfeed, few new digital media companies made as much of a splash in the 2010s as Vice did. Vice still exists in some form, but its meteoric success was followed by a steep fall as the company was exposed for its “boys club” culture and for the fact that executives (like co-founder Shane Smith) were taking home huge salaries while the company experienced mass layoffs and bankruptcy. All of this and more is explored in Eddie Huang’s documentary Vice Is Broke, coming to MUBI on August 29.
Huang (known for multiple ventures, including writing the book that inspired ABC sitcom Fresh Off The Boat) was a former Vice contributor, hosting two seasons of the food and culture docuseries Huang’s World. Described as“A disaster capitalism exposé that’s emblematic of an era, from the irresistible insider’s point of view of a man on a mission to tell it like it is,” the Vice Is Broke trailer (below) reflects the Vice style and champions the people who did great work there—without shying away from Vice’s dark side. That includes connecting with Vice magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes, now better known as the founder of far-right neo-fascist group the Proud Boys. “Talking to Gavin is risky, and you don’t know what he’s going to say,” Huang shared in an interview with The Ankler. “He is the voice of Vice. That is what was sold around the world. And I think it’s important for people to see how something like his voice gets packaged and commodified and turned into a brand, and people are buying it and listening to it, unbeknownst to them that this guy is a Nazi.”
Huang was reportedly released from his NDA with the company in exchange for not pursuing payment for residuals he was owed from Huang’s World; some of the contributors to the film are ex-Vice employees who didn’t care about their NDAs and just wanted to tell the truth, he told The Ankler. He himself was inspired by a 2017 New York Times exposéon the toxic culture at the company. “There are a lot of things people at Vice did that did not make the New York Times article, that did not make our documentary, but do not get it twisted,” Huang said. “This place is worse than you think it was.”
