“Their lawyers are still trying to fight us”

Eddie Huang attended the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday to both bury and praise Vice.

The author, chef and former host of the bankrupt media company’s “Huang’s World” was there with his new documentary, “Vice Is Broke.” The film is both a tribute to Vice’s anarchic spirit and the generations of aggressive, boundary-breaking, rule-breaking journalists and filmmakers it employed, and a darker look at the greed and questionable ethics that helped land it in Chapter 11. And Huang, who says he got his signed NDA written down in exchange for unpaid royalties, made it clear that Vice, or what’s left of it, isn’t too happy with what it’s made.

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“Their lawyers are still trying to fight us on this film,” Huang said during a Q&A after the documentary’s premiere at TIFF Lightbox Cinema. He added that Shane Smith, the colorful and controversial co-founder of Vice whose bad-boy reputation helped attract hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from media companies like Disney and Discovery, declined his interview request. Huang made it clear that he did not approve of Smith’s leadership style or his 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 sent legal letters. You know, Shane, to put it bluntly, is a coward. He left all his friends and associates out in the cold.”

Huang said he spent $380,000 of his own money to make the documentary, which chronicles Vice’s beginnings as a free magazine offering sex advice and provocative photoshoots, and its evolution into a global media organization spanning places like Sierra Leone and Liberia (though Huang notes that Vice tends to dwell on the conflicts and violence in those countries rather than highlighting the positive aspects of their culture and the people living 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 be able to indulge in 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, as well as the way McInnes’s far-right views sometimes seeped into its coverage. McInnes left Vice in 2008 to found the Proud Boys, an all-male, neo-fascist organization. He agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, devoting his time to defending free speech while also making penis jokes and racist remarks.

“You can be pro-free speech, you can be pro-arms, but you also have to weigh ultimate freedom and theoretical ideas of freedom against harming people,” Huang said of McInnes. “What’s the point of your art if you’re harming people more than you’re elevating them or educating them?”

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