Eddie Hwang attended the burial and tribute to Vice on the opening night of the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday.
The author, chef and former host of the defunct media company’s “Hwang World” was there with his new documentary, “Vice Is Broke.” The film serves as an ode to Vice’s anarchic spirit and the generations of aggressive journalists and filmmakers who worked for it, as well as a darker look at the greed and questionable ethics that helped send it into Chapter 11. Hwang, who says he got a waiver of the nondisclosure agreement he signed in exchange for not paying the rest, explained that Vice, or what’s left of it, isn’t very happy with what it’s made.
“Their lawyers are still trying to fight us over this movie,” Huang said during a Q&A session following the documentary’s premiere at the Lightbox Cinema at the Toronto International Film Festival. He added that Vice co-founder Shane Smith, whose notoriety as a young man helped attract hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from media companies like Disney and Discovery, declined his requests for an interview. Huang made clear that he did not approve of Smith’s leadership style or behavior after Vice went bankrupt and agreed to be acquired by Fortress Investment Group and a group of investors.
“He threatened legal action, they sent legal letters. You know, Shin is, quite simply, a coward. He left all his friends and coworkers safe,” Huang said.
Hwang said he spent $380,000 of his own money to make the documentary, which celebrates Vice’s early days as a free magazine offering sex tips and sexy photoshoots, as well as its evolution into a media organization that travels the globe, covering hotspots like Sierra Leone and Liberia (though Hwang notes that Vice tended to focus on the conflict and violence in those countries, rather than highlighting the positive parts 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 really special place for young people to showcase their art.”
In addition to Smith, Huang also examines the role Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes played in establishing the company’s disruptive tone, as well as the way McInnes’s 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-fascist organization. He agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, and spent his time advocating for free speech, as well as making sexist jokes and racist comments.
“You can be a man who defends freedom of speech, or a man who defends the right to bear arms, but you also have to measure absolute freedom and theoretical ideas of freedom by people who are hurt,” Huang said of McInnis. “What is the purpose of your art if you are hurting people more than you are uplifting or educating them?”
