Vice Is Broke (2024) Movie Script

1
You know,
I'm curious though.
You are actually
the number one employer
- of human beings
in Williamsburg.
- Yeah.
How does it feel?
Good. But we first
came to Williamsburg--
it's a good story.
So we started in Montreal.
And we came down to New York
in the dotcom sort of era.
So we moved to North 4th
'cause Triple Five Soul
gave us part of their
warehouse for free.
And at the
time, this is like 2000
and all the crack whores
were down there.
And they were like $5 blowjobs,
like the lowest common
denominator shit.
We used to be extorted by
a crackhead named Crazy Larry.
And he would literally shit
on our stoop
unless we paid him a dollar.
So we had to pay him a dollar
a day, extortion,
or he would shit on our stoop.
You know what I loved about it
is Manhattan was right there,
and here was completely lawless.
Like, there was no law,
there was nothing.
Like, there was
a coke place here,
stayed open all night,
you could go buy coke.
What was it called?
Kokie's.
My favorite bar was,
there was this--
- ...you ever hear about the Chex Cash?
- - Yeah.
So Chex Cash was
two 16-year-old kids.
They took an old, deserted check
cashing place on the water.
Ninety-nine cent beers,
punk rock on a jukebox,
and, fucking, you'd just sit
by the water and drink Pabst
Blue Ribbon for 99 cents.
Boom, that's fucking Brooklyn.
Brooklyn was,
for I'd say a decade,
the coolest 20-block
radius in the world.
I like how you just put the...
Can we get a shot of him
putting the bone on the table?
This is a guy who grew up
in a steak house here,
where he's just like, "I'm gonna
put the bone on the table now."
I came up as a chef
in an era
where everything was shifting
underneath my feet.
And I'll show
you what you do.
Yeah!
After watching
Food Network dominate
food culture in America
for the better part of a decade,
food and travel
exploded on the internet
with websites like Eater
and apps like Yelp.
It was a hit, I mean a big hit.
With all these new options,
Food Network was
becoming a joke.
Oh, Lord.
And a new
voice had arisen.
What do you think about
these guys like Emeril Lagasse
and those guys
on the Food Network?
Well, you're asking me to
kick Santa Claus in the
crotch on television.
I mean...
I idolized Tony
because he humanized people.
How long you
been surfing now?
You were the first.
He broke stereotypes
and centuries of preconceived
notions and prejudices
with each one-hour episode.
In the wake of his success,
the Food Network scrambled
to find the next Tony Bourdain.
They even started a new channel
called The Cooking Channel
that went after young chefs
like myself.
How the hell have
you been making money here
with all these deals?
We have a good product.
At one point,
I was offered a series
called Cheap Bites
with The Cooking Channel,
but I balked when
a producer said,
"You could be the next
Asian hip-hop Guy Fieri."
Every executive started coming
to my restaurant,
but so did Tony.
- What's up, Tony?
- How are you, man?
How's it going?
- All good, how's things?
- Good to see you, man.
Good, good, good.
Delicious.
I didn't really know
what the fuck I was doing
with all the attention
and started to say wild things.
I was like Rudy Gobert
touching all the mics
during the pandemic,
not understanding the gravity
of the situation.
But Tony did.
He saw the food establishment
trying to kill my career
before it even really got
started and got my back.
Tony took me to dinner on the
second floor of the Spotted Pig
and told me one thing:
"Eddie, at every turn,
"they're gonna ask
you to bite the dick.
"And no matter what you do,
never bite the dick."
And I didn't.
I'm Christine Laskowski
with Signovision Journal,
and tonight we're in Soho at
the McNally Jackson Bookstore.
We're going to be hearing
from Taiwanese-American chef
and author Eddie Huang
about his new memoir,
Fresh Off the Boat.
Let's go have a seat.
I published a memoir
called Fresh Off the Boat.
Then ABC bought my memoir,
which became the first
Chinese-American
sitcom of all time.
- Excuse me?
- It's the American way, right?
You know about that.
Fresh Off the Boat .
Life
started to get weird.
Executives tried
plugging me into boxes,
but I never fit.
I got a TED fellowship
and lost it about 48 hours
into the conference
because I left to do a podcast
with Asa Kira and David Choe.
I lasted about one week doing
a new show with Meghan McCain
before they replaced me
with Baratunde.
And despite Fresh Off the Boat's
success, I hated it creatively.
I was out before the end
of the first season.
At every turn,
I stayed true to myself,
and the one place I felt at home
was a place called VICE.
I'm Shane Smith.
I'm Gavin McInnes.
I'm Suroosh Alvi.
And we're VICE Magazine,
and we're moving
to New York City!
"V".
VICE
was a lot of things.
A digital content creator.
Three million
subs across brands
and something like
half a billion video views.
An ad agency.
- Another round?
- Nah.
I'm taking it slow.
A news organization.
A media empire.
What's the mission?
The mission is to become
the largest media company
in the world and to not suck.
But originally,
it was a magazine started
by Haitians in Montreal.
We were working at a
place called Voice in Montreal.
It was a make-work project
for Haitian immigrants and us.
And then after a while,
they owed us money,
and they couldn't pay us,
so we took it,
we dropped the 'O',
and called it VICE,
and then that was it.
So you stole
the magazine from a
non-profit organization
that was trying
to help Haitians?
Correct.
Dude, that's kind
of not that nice.
Yeah.
VICE was
successful for several reasons,
but what they were selling,
if you ask Shane Smith,
was cool.
Every generation,
you have a changing of
the guard immediately.
Woodward and Bernstein were
the punks of their generation,
and now they're the old guard.
By definition, when you have
a changing of the guard,
you have a different language.
This sales
pitch took VICE at one point
to a $6 billion valuation.
And Shane was looked
at like this Professor
X-like media mogul
who could get along with mutants
and businessmen alike.
What a fucking guy.
Thank you.
Then it went bankrupt.
The VICE publishing
business is now
going to operate as a smaller,
break-even business.
A lot of
people lost their jobs.
A lot of people lost money.
And some people like myself
never got paid what was owed.
You could read about it here,
and here, and here.
And I'm sure there'll be
an Alex Gibney-esque documentary
with talking heads sitting
on stools, cutting the story
into bite-sized pieces
from mouth breathers
like this was WeWork or Enron.
These people are risk takers.
They're impulsive.
But VICE was different.
At one point,
this was a free magazine
that meant a lot to people.
Not investors, not the market,
not the trades, not demographics
or numbers in a spreadsheet,
but actual fucking people.
VICE's existence challenged
everything we knew
about journalism and brands.
We invested in story.
And character.
And showed that
with a "DIY fuck what you heard,
"I'll see it for
myself" attitude,
you could get
closer to the truth.
But once it caught fire
and Shane saw the value,
we all fell victim
to a resource curse.
The thing that I could
see happening was we
get to New York,
we lose our focus,
and we start sort of venturing
off into the side projects,
so much so that
we forget the mag,
which is the root
of our everything.
Looking at Shane's face,
you could tell
this thing meant so much to him.
It meant something to all of us,
and we give our
youth to this place.
But I swear to fucking god,
it didn't have to end like this.
I'm sorry I need you
to clear this shot.
Yeah, thank you.
Zach?
Stay next to this
dude, and then keep taking
pictures of the frame.
I wanna see what it looks like.
What're you looking
for in the frame?
- Just got to look fly.
- You got to look fly?
I feel like it's
a nice shot on you, bro.
Yeah, it's a nice shot.
Looks great.
- Let's do it.
- Alright, good.
- Dave approves the frame.
- Alright, let's go.
Wait, I hate like at the
beginning of documentaries
we can't use any of the "Oh,
do I look good? Oh, cool."
Cut to the interview.
I hate that shit.
None of that.
We start, we talk.
You don't want foreplay.
You just, like,
- rock it and roll.
- No foreplay.
Yeah, so what was the
last year you worked at VICE?
Oh, wow. Okay.
So, you like dumb, early VICE.
Started in... I want to say '98.
Oh, wow.
Still in Montreal.
In the early days in Montreal,
I remember the loft,
and it was a bunch
of like punk rock dudes
who really loved Wu-Tang.
Like they loved Wu-Tang.
And that's why they
gave me the platform.
So, my first column
in VICE magazine was called
"Ask the Poindexter."
And it was fake letters
written to me, the Poindexter,
about like the most
obscure hip hop facts.
It evolved into
an ad hoc position
of hip hop editor.
Because they were like, we need
someone that's a hip hop nerd
that's going to write about this
from a unique perspective,
even though my perspective
wasn't that unique,
because I was just
trying to pay homage to
Ego Trip and On The Go.
And I have to say this,
because it's really like
those magazines raised me.
Ego Trip specifically
was a massive, massive,
massive influence on VICE .
- High concept .
- Yeah, satirical .
So that humor,
that kind of self-awareness
was missing at the time
in a lot of hip hop journalism.
So, when I came on board,
what I kept saying was like,
"rappers are the funniest people
on earth."
Like they are the most vibrant,
funniest people
with the best sense of humor,
the best references.
All you need to do
is transcribe.
- That's sick.
- - And that started in '98,
and I went until 2007.
And then when the band
became bigger,
I was like,
you know, I'm an artist,
I'm signed to the label.
I don't really need to be
writing music criticism
for the magazine.
- For the magazine. You know?
- Yeah.
Wanna be by yourself
And no one else
Alright
Alright
Your quarantine album
you start writing,
you just, you want wax now, you
know, like you're good, dawg.
- That's different.
- That's better.
Congratulations, man.
Looking back
in VICE Magazine,
they let me do whatever I wanted
because they knew that
they did not know this music
and they did not revere
- ...the music as much as I did.
- Yeah.
And you would think
that you would write
an article, it's VICE,
people thought we just
wrote this and sent it in.
Like no way.
Revisions, edits, this
paragraph needs to go there.
Like really, you know, rigorous.
People never knew that
or it didn't come off
because the tone
was so spontaneous.
But these things were really
labored over, at least for me.
You know, Jesse was a
really, really rigorous
and demanding editor.
- Pearson?
- Yeah.
Yo, Jesse Pearson
brought that literary bent.
Him and Gavin merged and they
did something really special
that should not be overlooked
because like--
But that story gets eclipsed.
At that time already, so 2000,
it was already starting
to rumble under the surface.
I remember reading
Gavin's "VICE Guide to Hate".
That's a very important
article in the sort of
journalistic bent.
I remember reading that
and being like, "This is weird."
Like some of it's funny,
some of it's,
you know, today you would say
like edgelord or whatever.
I don't know what he does now.
I don't follow.
But in those days,
he was a hysterically
funny writer.
So, when he wrote the "VICE
Guide to Hate", it was funny.
You know, so you kind of like,
you felt uncomfortable.
You were like, "This is weird."
Like, "What does
he really think?"
I think that was the question
on our minds.
Does he really think this,
or is he being funny?
Which as you know is
the strategy behind a
lot of hate speech,
even today, right?
It's 4chan.
It's the Pepe meme, right?
"I'm just joking."
- Yeah.
- That's classic. But...
before it went to
shit or it went too far
or before it became
even just corny,
Gavin was a really,
really funny writer.
Like truly, a really,
really, really funny writer.
Speaking of Dave 1
got me thinking.
I knew that Gavin got kicked out
of VICE before I got there.
And people actively
tried not to mention his name
around the office
like he was Voldemort.
But I never knew why
Gavin got kicked out
or how VICE ended
up in Shane's hands.
And watching this cautious,
fantastic, curated man
who was literally checking
the frame of the shot
dance around the topic of Gavin
while simultaneously
dropping hints,
made me realize I
had a lot to uncover.
I really
liked that article.
- I grew up orthodox Jewish.
- - Yeah.
So feel free
to ask me questions.
But growing up Orthodox Jewish,
I would say...
sort of led the way
to working at VICE
because I did not fit in there.
I was a total misfit.
And I was so sheltered.
As soon as I was free of there,
I was like,
"Get me the hell out of here.
"And I want to do everything.
"And I want to do the
weirdest shit I can do."
I was always drawn to things
that were frightening
because I just wanted to
experience life outside
of this tiny bubble
where everyone liked
and did the same thing.
Jesse Pearson,
who was the glue for everything
in the early days,
he and I both worked at this
magazine called Index ,
and he brought a copy of VICE.
It was the year 2000.
And I just remember looking
at it and thinking, "What?
What is this?
"Oh, my God, what is this?"
So I thought,
this is like a zine,
but somehow with like,
amazing production values.
Was the beauty of VICE that
you could just talk about
anything you wanted there?
Yes. I don't think they
ever said no to anything
I ever wanted to write.
The stuff you were doing, like
the guide to female ejaculation,
I have been seeing stuff
that you should be proud.
So, you had
the VICE guide to,
you know, all
different sexual acts,
but they didn't have one
for female ejaculation.
So I said, "May I please add
this to the fantastic guides?"
'Cause those were all
pretty good. They were funny
and the advice was pretty solid.
So I just wanted to,
you know add to it.
I realize talking
to you that I'm still
really figuring out
how I feel about
my time at VICE.
They created this
place that young people
got to write and create
and be right and be wrong
and figure their shit out.
Yeah, it's a very
different time now.
There wasn't really
any canceling, I guess.
I mean, you could,
just because it wasn't so...
it was such a small audience.
And it was a free magazine.
You could either pick it up
and look at it and like it
or throw it in the garbage.
- Yeah .
- That was it .
At the time,
I had a lot of different jobs.
I also had a blog
called Teenage Unicorn .
It's not online anymore.
I scrubbed it.
But I have a picture
of a really fun barbecue
that Gavin had where he, like,
he put his dick on a bun.
And then he put ketchup on it,
which is actually more offensive
because you don't put ketc--
- Mustard.
- Mustard all the way.
So, you know, I was more mad
about the ketchup than anything.
I don't know. Does it
sound terrible if I
just say it was funny?
I'm sure somebody
can figure out an equation,
like politically,
where that is wrong.
And there's probably
many reasons--
Well, it's wrong
if it's not your friend
And you explicitly ask
them not to.
After Jesse Pearson
left and then I left,
they got this giant
influx of money
and suddenly you could do
these crazy things
but for a much bigger audience.
And I kind of feel like
that's where things got iffy
because suddenly you had like
a lot of people in the office
who aren't all friend--
like long-time friends
and you can't do the same
kind of crazy shit
because you'll offend someone.
Gavin likes rules, obviously.
"Do's and don'ts."
Some of the do's and don'ts
were hilarious and right on.
But a lot of the do's and don'ts
were very much like
how to be a woman,
how to be an attractive woman,
how to be an attractive
woman to men.
But Gavin wasn't mean to me
or wasn't scary enough
- To make me be like, "whoa."
- Yeah.
He would have
stupid shit on his desk,
you know... racist stuff,
and I would just roll my eyes
'cause I was like,
- He's like an edgelord, you know?
- - Yeah.
He'd say something
shocking and I'd say like,
"Alright, Howard Stern,"
- Like it just was his shtick.
- Yeah.
Did you ever hear about
the... VICE initiation thing
where they gave out like rings
and pins and stuff?
I mean, I got a ring,
but I don't know how you guys--
See, I never got a ring.
I got a pin.
And that's fucked up.
- I've never heard
about the pin-- - I
didn't want a ring.
- Damn. You can think about it
- Let me tell you--
while they do the new card.
So Gavin had this thing where
he would hand out these pins,
and he had like a Hitler doll,
and he would be like,
he would dub you with it.
And I was like, "Fuck no."
Mark.
What was I saying?
Something came up
with my therapist where I said,
"Oh, but you're not
supposed to do that
"when you're my age,"
she was like, "Where are
you getting this from?"
And I was like,
"Holy shit, from Gavin."
Like 20 years later,
I've internalized...
these rules that are absurd.
And there's a very
infamous... story.
It's so stupid.
Jesse and Lesley,
and me and Gavin
were hanging out.
Gavin just went on
one of his comedy bits
about like how a
woman should look.
- Oh.
- And when he got to um...
the labia, he said,
"Ugh, labia has to be
perfectly symmetrical.
"Otherwise, it's
just disgusting."
And I just was like, "Ugh, I
keep-- like, come on already."
And they were like, "Oh,
someone has asymmetrical labia."
And I was like, "I don't know,
but like I'm just enough."
Despite
knowing what Gavin became
after his time at VICE,
hearing Amy talk about
his errors is shocking.
It's one of those things
that doesn't feel real.
It doesn't make sense until
people like Dave and Amy
paint the portrait for you.
Looking at it in retrospect,
you may be wondering why
any of us went to work
at a place like this.
For a lot of us,
we were rejected everywhere
and spent most of our
youth looking for a
place to be ourselves,
even if the place
was founded by a guy like Gavin.
You could see Gavin as a savior,
a cult leader,
or maybe just a chilly pimp.
They never had a daddy,
so when they call
someone "Daddy,"
that's everything they got.
No matter what he does,
he was the first person to see
value in some of these writers,
and they'll always have
a place in their hearts for him.
It's a tough thing
for people to understand
who weren't in
situations like this.
Sometimes you love
people that hurt you
simply because they were
the first to love you at all.
I'm curious,
not just in the context of VICE,
like, what drew you to writing?
Reading, I think,
drew me to writing.
I was drawn to reading first as
an escape from my life as a kid.
You know, it was
like a safe place.
I think that if you read enough,
you've got a natural
inclination to write, it
just starts to happen.
But writing writing, you know,
in terms of,
like, prose, journalism,
started for me with punk
rock probably, with
zines, certain zines.
There was kind of a
zine explosion for me.
And a lot of them were--
not even
what you might call punk.
They were more like, some people
call them hate literature,
you know to some degree.
I was attracted to that stuff.
Also, independent comics
were really big for me
in terms of inspiring me to like
know that I could do something
without having to
have permission.
When I read
the old VICE shit,
you weren't trying
to capture youth culture.
You weren't trying
to define youth culture.
You were just sharing the shit
you were interested in,
and because it was so specific,
it became representative.
I think Gavin started it
before we even met him.
And then I came in, and
then I brought in Amy
Kellner and Lesley Arfin.
And I think the four
of us defined a tone.
I always refer to it as, like,
hyper-intelligent valley girl.
You know what I mean?
Like, you know you can
drop continental philosophy,
but you also say totes.
When you were
there, it felt like the
wildest literary magazine.
You know, like, I would give
this shit to my kid to read,
to be like,
"This is the
literature of that time."
"These are the romantic
poets of the early aughts."
- That's
cool. Yeah, that's
great. - Right?
Like, you have
Miranda July in here.
You have Ottessa
Moshfegh in here.
Natasha Lyonne.
Like, this shit is
a time capsule.
So, those are,
those are of a certain era.
I mean this one was really
controversial with some readers.
- It's cops telling their own stories.
- - Wow.
"The bag is NYPD slang
for the full uniform.
"If your bag
is perfectly pressed,
"crispy condition,
you're probably a pussy.
"Real cops wear busted-out
uniforms as a sign of
experience and pride."
Do's and don'ts, baby.
"She's either an empowered slut
"or the kind of person
that will tell your boss
"you made up the
nickname Bald Hitler."
Wow.
And, you know,
a lot has been said about Gavin
and his political
views and as a person.
Oh, yeah. I mean,
there were pieces in VICE
that were starting
to indicate conservatism
even before I came in in 2002.
There were little
things here and there.
So, I think Gavin was exploring
these ideas way earlier
- than a lot of
people think he
was. - Yeah.
So, it was bubbling, yeah.
It was bubbling.
And I think Shane...
Fuck it, I'll just say it.
I think Shane was, like,
jealous of Gavin being the face
of VICE for a long time,
and he wanted
some of that shine too.
And he saw this as a way.
So, he made his move.
- Did you have a ring at VICE?
- I had a ring.
I lost it like a week
after they gave it to me.
- You didn't
give a fuck? - Fuck, no.
I'm not gonna wear that.
To me, it would feel like
wearing your own band's T-shirt,
you know, which is a lame move.
I think they tried to
like, get our loyalty with it.
And the only people
that ever thought it was cool
were like the business
people that invested
and like got a ring.
And, like, of course,
you cornballs thought
this shit was cool.
- And you're
wearing it to
this day. - Yeah.
Shane was a good
businessman in a certain way.
Like, he could really sell.
But his approach to selling,
I always kind of liken it to
P.T. Barnum, you know?
Where you're like,
a carnival barker, you know?
Taking the freaks, who were us,
and selling them to the squares.
He wanted consciously
to win that sector of
culture over to himself,
you know what I mean?
I don't think it
succeeded, you know?
After you left,
it's just kids with guns.
Well, that's
kind of why I left.
I quit in 2010 because
the bosses at that point,
were wanting the magazine
to become kind of like
a catalogue for
the video content.
And it was like
these attempts at hard news.
Sending some kid to a country
that they'd never been to,
and basically the thrust
of these pieces would be
like, "It's scary here."
And I found that
really irresponsible
and really othering.
I was like,
"I don't want a piece of this."
And that's a filter they
chose to put on, you know?
To look at the world that way.
Somebody went to Liberia,
and they were talking about
how scary everything was.
This is like a civil war
on steroids.
It's a post-apocalyptic
Armageddon
with child soldiers
smoking heroin,
cross-dressing cannibals,
systematic rape.
It's total hell on earth.
And then
like a week later,
I saw an episode of Anthony
Bourdain's show at the time,
and he was in the same place,
walking down the street,
like, "It's vibrant
here, it's exciting.
"Gonna try some food
and meet some people."
Just these two completely
different approaches to
these places.
I think I even told Shane this
at some point like, 'coolness',
whatever you want to say about
that word and concept,
and how complicated it is
and how problematic it can be,
'coolness' is not
a renewable resource.
You know, if you have it
and you want to sell it,
you can sell it once.
Speaking to Jesse
reminded me of the time
I went to Jamaica
for Huang's World .
I didn't like VICE's coverage
of Black people
because it was always kids
with guns or dudes with drugs.
I grew up working
for a Jamaican chef
at my dad's restaurant
named Chef Andy,
and he was none of those things.
I wanted to show the Jamaica
that he told me about,
so I visited schoolchildren
and spoke to people
about Marcus Garvey.
There is way more to Jamaica
than just the whole party
and the hype life,
smoking weed and all of that.
There's a lot more.
But when I got back,
Eddy Moretti,
the number two at
VICE at that time,
went off on me saying,
"Where's the guns?
Where's the drugs?"
"Where's Trench Town?"
I told him I wasn't down
for his ghetto safari
kids with guns bullshit,
and he suspended me.
When I went back to Jamaica
for the reshoot,
I put this clip in,
but they took it out
because it made fun
of their approach to journalism.
Yo, if this was
any other VICE show coming here,
it'd be like this.
So, we are in the
mountains of Jamaica right now,
and this is very,
very dangerous.
Many people have died here.
Thomas Horton has
died here three times.
VICE: HBO.
We go there.
Now, I always think that
a lot of what VICE has done
has happened because
of your sheer will of it...
Yeah, I think that too.
I think...
I think because you're like...
I mean, you know, it's part,
like this sort of...
part you know, having a vision,
part P.T. Barnum hyping it
and you know sort of
willing everyone to you
know, to go along with you.
Yeah. When you're starting out,
you have to definitely,
you know be louder noise
than the other guys.
You freak me out.
No, I'm the only one
that doesn't freak you out.
- Oh, that's right.
- So, you've forgotten that.
There was
a writer, Christi Bradnox,
who wrote the
"VICE Guide to Eating Pussy",
and I was like,
"This is what I want to write."
It was like telling guys what
to do, or girls or whatever.
I was like, "This is
exactly the type of shit
that I want to do
when I leave school."
It was so funny and really
like a celebration of women.
And I just wanted to
write the kind of shit
that VICE was writing.
So, when I first
started at VICE,
I told Gavin, I'm like,
"Look, I don't know who
Christi Bradnox is,
"but I want to... this is
what I want to write one day.
"Like, I want to...
I want to be her."
And he goes,
"I'm Christi Bradnox."
And I was like, "Well, I
still want to write like her."
Gavin was always
very, very funny.
He's a very funny,
very charismatic person,
for better or for worse.
- Shane isn't.
- Yeah.
He went out with my friend.
I don't give a shit
about talking shit about Shane.
- Yeah.
- He went out with my friend
and, like, bought her this
really ugly painting
that was like,
it wasn't a painting.
It was like a sand art,
and she was like,
"Oh, Shane got that for me.
"He said that, like,
Buddhists made it,
"and it takes them, like,
you know, seven years to
do every grain of sand."
And I'm like, "I saw
that at the airport."
"But of course
he told you that."
- You know?
- Yeah, yeah.
Like, I don't care
what you have. Be normal.
Even when you have dinner
with Shane, he always will
take my hand and be like,
"This is about to be
the best meal you've ever had."
- And I'm like, "Homie".
- Hundred percent, dude.
"We're at Nobu, dawg."
It's, like,
not even good anymore.
This is a Japanese
Cheesecake Factory.
So, in that sense, like,
both Gavin and Shane do have
like this cult leader thing,
and Gavin probably, like,
could have been,
like a really good cult leader.
But I don't really think
that Gavin believes in anything.
I think he believes in jokes.
My name is Gavin McInnes.
I'm judging the Air Guitar
Brooklyn Championships.
My brother has Down syndrome,
so I have a bit of a soft
spot for shit like that.
I don't know how you could
ever take this seriously
and not be a dick.
You were humorous like--
Yeah, it was like Mad Magazine
for grown-ups.
At VICE we weren't journalists.
In fact we probably
ruined journalism for
the rest of the world
- that came after.
- Yeah.
Because we were
not fact-checkers.
This was all,
"Let's go someplace
"and infiltrate and
become part of it,
"and then we'll report back."
You have a duty as a journalist.
We did not have that.
We did not have those skills.
We weren't interested
in being that.
We were biased. There was
nothing journalistic about VICE.
And I was super insecure,
you know?
Like, I just wanted to, like...
I just wanted like,
guys to like me
and to, like,
feel like I was good at my job.
And so...
Gavin, who was really
like a true believer
in, like anarchy and, like...
would make racist jokes,
I made them, too.
Because I cared more about
being accepted by him
and feeling insecure
and wanting to fit in
than, like what--
than actually hurting people
and what that meant.
And...
in retrospect...
I was wrong.
And like, it's not okay,
but also, I can't
go back in time.
I just wasn't as smart
as I could have been.
You know, like
I cared more about being cool
than I did about being right
or like kind.
So I was curious,
what happened that day
that Gavin left?
Okay, Gavin had been
gone for two weeks
because Sophie--
his daughter Sophie was born.
His first kid.
Prior to that,
Gavin had gone to,
I believe, it was like a...
a David Duke conference.
I just took it with
a grain of salt
because that's how I took
everything Gavin said.
So he goes to this
David Duke thing,
and they lose advertisers.
So Shane says, "No bueno.
"Jesse's the editor now.
You're not."
"Why are advertisers pulling?
This is what we do."
"Advertisers are pulling"
because you're associating
yourself with David Duke,
"and that's scary,
"and so they don't want
their product to be
advertised in the magazine."
"Okay, fuck you.
I'll show you what's scary."
Right?
So then Gavin comes back
from two weeks,
and he's like, "Where
the fuck is my desk?
Where's all my stuff?"
None of his stuff was there.
He's asking everybody,
like, "Where's my chair?
"Have you seen
my chair, my desk?
"This isn't my computer.
"What the fuck?"
And everybody's quiet.
"What the fuck is going on?"
"What the fuck?"
And then Gavin just was like,
"Fuck this fucking
bullshit, whatever."
Don't know the exact words.
Stormed out.
I don't think he ever
went back to the office.
It was a huge moment,
a huge, pivotal,
traumatic moment for his life.
His entire identity
was that magazine, right?
And he got booted out.
None of us
are born knowing the answers.
If people don't get to
express themselves
and they don't get to learn
through some of these mistakes,
then you're just bottled up,
and you're like,
- "Okay, I'm gonna keep
it to myself." - Right,
and then what happens?
- You're gonna explode.
- You explode and you start...
a group that is physically
scary, like the Proud Boys.
I went to America...
in the '90s.
Yeah. Boo!
Boo it up!
Free speech is very dangerous...
to the state.
The government
doesn't like free speech,
and they've tricked us
into culturally thinking
that we don't like free speech.
We don't like telling stories.
We're worried about
offending people.
But we're not.
What happened to the West?
We're fighting to be ourselves.
We're fighting to be proud
and unashamed of who we are.
And what are we?
We're Westerners!
If you want to come here and you
have those values, come on in.
But if you want to tell us
what to do, you can fuck off.
I'm so nervous
about meeting Eddie.
Oh, my god.
Hope he likes me.
I don't know Chinese.
Does he speak English?
'Cause we could
use Google Translate.
As
I was getting ready to
enter the scene,
I could hear Gavin telling
jokes about speaking Chinese.
We've met before. Did you
know we did comedy together?
Where?
At Brooklyn Brewery.
- No way!
- Yeah. Everyone loved you,
which I suspect
is based on race.
Yeah, probably.
I
felt like his strategy
was to try and shock me,
like he shocks everyone else.
But I didn't want to get
caught in his vortex arguing.
Oh, fuck, I got gum on my pants.
Do you-- you know how to
get gum off your pants?
The positions he
takes are so far outside the
realm of reason and logic
that you lose as soon
as you meet him on that ground.
- Do you want a drink?
- I'll have a drink.
What d'you have?
I'm having Coors Banquet 'cause
of the Bud Light incident.
I only wanted
to know two things.
- We got Gatorade. We got
Jameson. - I will have
the Malibu watermelon.
One, is this
truly who you are?
- This is all fake.
- Oh, fuck.
This is a fake bar you're in.
You're in a studio.
- I'll come around
and see what's real.
- These are all lies.
I'll have a fruit punch
Gatorade with Jameson.
- Oh, that's a fun idea.
- Yeah.
And two,
how the fuck did you let
Shane take over the company
that you gave your voice to?
The story of VICE
is there's really two stories,
and Shane is the backbone
of both of them.
So the first story is
my years at VICE,
and that was--
that culture was punk rock.
Like everyone's friends,
everyone hangs out, you know.
Open floor plan, no offices.
Everyone can hear
you on the phone.
So Shane managed to take
that esoteric, hardcore DIY shit
and make it profitable.
Then when I left,
Shane's attitude was,
"Where's the money?"
And the money
was with young girls.
"Alright, what are they into?
"I don't care what it is.
"If it's kiddie porn,
"if it's snuff films,
what are they into?
"Oh, they're into woke
shit. Okay, let's do a
bunch of woke shit."
Yeah, I know you got an NDA,
but it's like,
did you choose to leave,
or did you get forced out?
I just became
incompatible with the brand.
Like, you know,
I had an ad agency after that,
and it got shut down
'cause I said trans people
are mentally ill gays.
I think too...
the problem
with salesmen is it's not cool.
I think it is cool.
You make the world go round,
but used-car
salesmen ruined sales.
And I think Shane
hated being the like,
uncool guy for so long.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you
a very real question,
and it's like,
one of the main reasons I came,
'cause I watch all your shit,
and I see everything
you're doing, and I know
your old work at VICE.
My feeling is
you really are being the person
on some Life of David Gale shit.
What's David Gale?
I'm a murderer
four days shy of his execution.
The
murder's way too clumsy.
This guy is a
major intellectual.
Life of David Gale is this film
where Kevin Spacey is trying
to overturn capital punishment.
So what he does is him and
his partner set up a murder,
but she's killing herself,
and he sets himself up
as the person
that did the murder,
and when he dies,
they release the video
and realize they killed
an innocent man.
So I'm playing a Hitler
character to expose racists?
That's what I think.
- That's a terrible theory.
- That's what I think, Gavin.
But, if you really
believe this shit, then--
Believe what shit, though?
Like well I mean,
like...
all of it.
If your boss grabs your ass
and it doesn't hurt
and you don't like it, quit.
- That's harassment.
- Yeah,
- that's harassment.
- Okay, then quit.
I'm so glad you
found it out on TV
that you can't grab
somebody's ass.
I swear to God,
I did not know that.
Do you think white
supremacy exists in the US?
Not to any measurable degree.
Women do earn less in America
because they choose to.
They don't go the extra mile.
They don't work all weekend.
Why am I sitting here?
I'm sitting here.
You're making a mistake. You
would be much happier at home
- with a husband and children.
- Oh, boy.
You're not supposed to say it,
but one of the biggest problems
with Jews is--
Ow! Ow! What the...
I was gonna say
the problem with Jews is
there's not enough of them.
I've never
met a bona fide racist.
Like, it's not a thing.
Yet it's all the fucking...
Joe Biden says white supremacy
is the number one threat
to this country,
and you're like,
"Okay, can I meet one
of these fucking guys?"
What is this issue?
Yo, I'm wondering if this--
you're taking this position
and being this character.
What character?
Like, what position?
I think women would be
much happier at home.
Is that sexist?
I can't tell you how
many women I know that
fucking hate their jobs.
But there's a lot of men
that hate their jobs.
Generally men, when they
talk about work, they want
to help the other guy.
Women aren't into solutions.
They just wanna bitch.
When you give them a solution,
they're like,
"What the fuck are you doing?
"I'm going to
continue bitching."
I have an idea.
I think we should arm wrestle
to see what the truth is.
- Okay, I'll arm wrestle you.
- Let's fucking arm wrestle.
So, one, two, three.
- Yes.
- One, two, three.
Women are happier at home.
Amelia Earhart.
Feminism has ruined women.
Gloria Steinem was
a shield for Shane.
Gloria Steinem
killed men's clubs.
That's why Proud
Boys did so well,
'cause men's clubs
are supposed to exist.
I'll never get to fuck my wife
again if I lose.
This sucks.
This sucks.
I guess women are great
in the workforce.
- They're great in the
workforce, man. - I
love them suing people.
Their stupid HR jobs,
Controlling the company's
social media.
No, I really think everyone
should have the opportunity.
No one's saying they
shouldn't have the opportunity,
but women tend to
be happier at home.
You don't want government,
you don't like law,
but you love rules.
- Like, do's and
don'ts is rules. -
Yeah, but it's a joke.
I'm not trying to catch
you, either. I'm just--
Right, but I can't--
I don't enforce these rules.
But I can have rules.
I do think there is a
thing about you that
people are just scared of.
What kind of pussy
is scared of ideas?
Like a Holocaust denier.
That's a pretty horrible idea.
Pedophilia, terrible idea.
Say you think all Blacks
should go back to Africa.
That's a dumb belief.
It doesn't scare me.
I won't argue with you.
- No?
- Yo, you are consistent.
Well, I'm too lazy to lie, so.
I just wish I could argue
with people about things
I believe in, you know?
I think what I struggle
with personally
when speaking to Gavin is
the idea that he could
possibly believe this shit.
What do you think is in
the interest of your
country right now?
I've met
white supremacists.
I specialize in talking
to these dumb fucks.
When I was interviewing a white
nationalist group, Forza Nuova,
on our Sicily episode,
a passerby recognized them
and challenged them about
their anti-immigration stance,
and they didn't like it.
Within minutes,
they phoned plainclothes cops
to arrest us and
take our footage.
Who cares?
We didn't do anything wrong.
Why did they say
they're taking you in?
I fought them
on giving my ID card.
Let's go, guys. Let's go, guys.
Bye-bye. Let's go.
I believe that
those people believe the
shit they're saying.
But there's something
about Gavin that makes me
feel he knows better.
He knows his
opinions are horseshit.
I think he's less a
white supremacist and
more of a nihilist,
cashing in on this
ridiculous caricature
he's turned himself into.
And I feel this way
because VICE was full of
people like this guy.
They get off on having these
ideas and being edgelords
because making people
feel uncomfortable
makes them feel powerful.
It's all a punk rock fake-out.
Gavin is still out here making
money, feeding his family,
telling incendiary jokes
because there's a large swath
of this nation
that takes it as the truth.
This guy's not crazy.
He's accidentally
representative.
But how the fuck did Shane take
this man's voice and magazine
and sell it
to people like Disney?
I like being a dad
so far, like three months.
I've been enjoying it.
It's been cool.
Damn, three months.
You're new. You're fresh in it.
Hi, guys.
Thank you for
having us here today.
I'm happy
to meet you guys.
Yeah.
So I figured you could read my friend Dave's palm first.
- Oh, no.
- Can I see your palms?
- Yeah.
- Okay, close your eyes.
Well, I do feel
that you have a lot of
deja vu, a lot of wisdom.
Do you write a lot?
Well, yeah.
I used to write
for a magazine called VICE.
And I think
those early issues of VICE,
there was an issue
where I painted the cover,
and I wrote like three articles
in it under different names,
I did the comic
strip in the back.
You know, basically
whatever I want. I could do
a goofy hitchhiking show
and serious news.
What I loved
about your show though,
like, besides the camera work
which was phenomenal,
was it was honest.
You know what I mean?
You straight up went
to go find a dinosaur
and you were like,
"I can't fucking find it."
We just said
we wanted to see the dinosaur
and they kept saying, "Do
you want to see the dinosaur?
"Do you wanna see
this dinosaur?"
"Yes, we want to
see the dinosaur."
So we had to do this ritual.
So they pour us
this clear liquid.
I don't know what
was in that stuff.
And then like some kind of dream
or something,
this thing just came out
and the people just screamed
and they were either
saying he's an evil spirit
or it's the dinosaur.
And I'm like, "Oh, I
guess that's the dinosaur."
And as fucked up
as I was you know
I was believing it at the time.
But I'm going to say
you had a void.
There was a void energy,
like just a numb energy.
I can feel it, but you tell
me what it was.
Yeah, it was--
Can you tell if he's
still cancelled by
looking at his hand?
Well, I still feel
you have a lot to achieve
because you're very honest,
you're very pure,
and that's why people saw that.
You weren't there
when it turned to shit.
But you still told me not to go.
Yeah, 'cause I was like,
"You will get fucked over."
I just thought
that because, like, I
had an attorney,
we had a contract,
they're going to owe me money
- ...because
legally in
America-- - They do.
they owe me money.
You knew you weren't getting
that money.
No, I genuinely did.
That's where I'm stupid.
No, you're not stupid.
I think he really did believe.
He really did trust them.
I saw Shane
fuck a lot of people over.
- Yeah.
- And like, I didn't like it.
And I did speak up for them.
You know, at VICE they
would give everybody these
rings that said VICE.
- Really?
- And they gave me a gold one,
but they didn't give anybody
else on my crew the VICE ring.
So I went and I made 'Rice'
rings for everybody on my crew,
and I paid for it
because I was just like,
"Yo, all for one or
like none for all."
- You know, like Goonies.
- Right.
I don't know if you wanna use
any of this for the documentary,
but like how long do you want
to feel that for?
- Didn't you just have a baby?
- Yeah, I did.
- Yeah, you just had a baby.
- Three months old.
Yeah, three-month-old baby.
What a great time to make
a documentary about VICE.
- You got your baby.
- Go fucking home
and be with your kid, dude.
This is a
weird Chink right here.
Well, you guys have
a connection though.
You know that.
Oh yeah?
I mean, he's pretty psychic.
He told me not to go to VICE.
When I met you, you had
just written Fresh Off the Boat .
And you were like a, you know,
it became a huge TV show.
ABC bought it.
But I told you from the
beginning, I was like,
"It's ABC, corporate America,
white television.
"You think they're gonna
make your book the way--"
It wasn't exactly how
you wrote it, right?
Yeah, and he got angry,
and I was like...
I always thought
I could persevere.
I thought I could
be like the change.
And so how long do you want
to keep repeating that and
feeling that feeling?
What is it that you
want to manifest?
No, my thing is this.
I don't think it's
about revenge.
It's justice.
Other people got fucked
over more than me.
And I was like,
"Somebody got to say something."
- I believe--
- But why does it
have to be you?
Choe
fucking pisses me off
because it's easy for him
to say, "Let it go."
Homie's got Facebook money.
But I also don't fault
Choe because he doesn't
know that I'm broke.
VICE owes me hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
My son was born
three months ago.
There's a triple
strike going on in LA
and I overdrafted
my bank account this month.
So yeah, I'm having a lot
of trouble letting this go.
And sometimes I wonder,
would life have been better as
the Asian hip-hop Guy Fieri?
Hey, I'm Guy Fieri,
and haven't been to a new
restaurant in 37 seasons.
But when I heard about Thai
Taco Tuesdays at Anajak Thai,
I just had to come
to Sherman Oaks and check out
what Chef Justin
Pichetrungsi's doing.
Come on in!
It's not fucking open!
Hell yeah, brother.
I'm with VICE legend
Santiago Stelley.
- How you doing,
Santi? - I'm good,
buddy. How you doing?
Hell yeah, thanks for being
on Triple D, man.
Weren't you working on some
magazine called Colors before?
Yeah, so I worked for years
at Colors Magazine.
My first contact ever with VICE
was because they had taken
a page out of Colors magazine,
literally just ripped it
and published it in VICE
as some sort of an advert
for a shoe company or something.
Hell no, brother. I wouldn't
even do shit like that.
I haven't shown up on my show
for fucking 10 seasons,
but you know not to take
a frame from another show
and put it in your show.
Right? So, VICE was just
starting to do video,
and after meeting them,
they asked me if I'd go
to Bolivia to shoot
a documentary the next day.
Hell yeah, Bolivia, baby.
Fucking A.
And ended up going to shoot
VICE Guide to Travel in 2006.
What are some of your
favorite pieces from that era?
I went to Colombia
with Thomas Morton
and with Ryan Duffy,
and in that shoot,
I think we were there
for about two weeks.
We shot "Columbian's
Devil's Breath,"
which is the world's
deadliest drug,
on YouTube nowadays,
"The Sewers of Bogota,"
"Bulletproof Tailor,"
"The Donkey Fucking Piece."
It was just kind
of all on the fly.
And when you do
things on the fly, I mean...
it just has a different energy,
you know?
If you see the "Columbian's
Devil's Breath" piece,
there's a junkie who helps us
to go buy what we need.
We landed at Bogota,
and 20 minutes after that,
we were shooting with this guy.
And Ryan kind of built
the whole doc around it.
Those kind of moments,
that kind of spontaneity,
we kind of went into every shoot
with that mentality.
It's hard because that's not
how content is produced, right?
It's not okay by the industry
standards or whatever.
You gotta help me
get something straight here.
Everybody always says,
"Spike Jonze, creative
director of VBS,"
but you're the
creative director.
Can you have two
creative directors?
Well, I mean, the whole
Spike thing was used for years.
We talked and--
you know, that was--
that was the sales department
or marketing kind of... tool.
I feel excited
and anxious that, you know,
just to make sure we
actually seize the
opportunity as well as we can.
I think we're just
at the beginning.
I feel like we've just built the
foundation of what it can be.
It's like Viceland
1.0 right now.
When we were
doing VBS for the first
five, six, seven years,
you know, I never had
any interaction with Spike.
Neither did anybody else.
But for the most part, those
formats that went on Viceland,
as little as I followed it,
were formats that had
been created on VBS, right?
They weren't even
VICE dot-com period formats.
And those formats, now
they seem like obvious things,
but they weren't at the
time. Nobody was doing
any of this stuff.
As a guy stuck
in a scripts format,
I was always very jealous about
the stuff you guys were doing
'cause you're breaking form
- ...and, you know,
subverting things, - Yeah.
and when I have to do my show
talking like this,
it hurts my throat, man.
Fuck. Gotta drink so much
water on Triple D just to
keep this voice up.
Alright, guys.
So we got noodle
supreme with shrimp.
Pad pong karee . It's like a
Chinese-Thai seafood dish.
And then we got,
you know, Dad's ribs.
Oh, hell yeah.
- So enjoy.
- Thank you. Appreciate it.
- Thank you.
- Yeah, dig in.
I think at this point
I can cease being Guy Fieri.
- No.
- There you go.
The food...
Oh, man. Bro, it is so
hard to be Guy Fieri.
It's not even funny.
I have so much
more respect for that guy
after being Guy Fieri
for like three hours.
But the shit that
you and Jesse did,
when you were doing it,
what credit did you
get on each piece?
- There were no directors.
- Yeah.
But then when you're the guy
who went and spent a month
in prison in Colombia,
which is... you know, stressful,
interesting situation.
Happy I had that opportunity,
but it's a stressful
situation to be in.
And then you're not really
getting credited for it, right?
The show doesn't jump out
of a bush into the camera.
- That's right.
- It's directed,
captured, hosted,
it's lived.
And at VICE, the funny thing is,
no one got a director's credit,
but Shane and Eddie's names
are on every single piece
of content at VICE.
I personally
feel that they didn't
give director credits
because they didn't
want people to come up.
Not having the director
credit really hurt a lot of
young directors at VICE.
For production out in the field,
we were always trying
to send an expert, right?
Not somebody who's like,
camera-ready but just like,
somebody who has deep knowledge
on a subject matter.
For the most part,
people were journalists
or had some sort
of journalistic,
journalism background.
But in post-production,
all of our editors came
from film school.
And so for a long time, a lot of
the directors were the editors,
because they were
these kind of film school kids
who knew how to tell a story,
and they were the ones just
figuring out a pile of tapes.
What do we do
with this, you know?
And then Shane just kind of sits
in front of this bear
and regales stories of,
like, his adventures,
and the assumption is always
there that he's the guy who
went and shot this story.
- Because Shane is a sales guy .
- Yeah.
He wasn't
a creative guy.
But Shane was somebody who
you really just had to
give him a little script
or here's your stand-up,
you know,
and just bare minimum, man.
I mean, we shot a ton
of interviews where he
just didn't show up.
Not because-- I mean,
he made it all the way
to Guadalajara, Mexico,
but then he stayed in the hotel
the day of the shoot.
And then after the
shoot, he inserts
himself in post-production.
And stylistically,
that's off from what we do.
It's disrespectful.
Yeah, it was just
very performative, right?
It was like he would do
these kind of stand-ups.
He'd wait for the cop car sirens
to be flashing by,
and then he'd do his, you know,
urgent-sounding stand-up, right?
I went through that process
once with him and just
thought, "Man, I can't.
"Like, this, like,
I'm gonna kill somebody."
And I think he probably
felt the same way,
and we never did
a production again.
It's a totally different
type of production.
- Yeah, the Shane production.
- It's a totally different--
- Yeah, it's
"Weekend at
Bernie's." - Yeah.
Yeah.
How did the
VICE on HBO show come
out of your guys' work?
So I'm not credited
on the HBO show
because I left once
we'd finished it,
but my credit was removed.
But that was built
off of our story bible.
I mean, we kept a story bible
in the content department,
and you know, there were
stories that we looked at
for years to make, right?
And eventually when first the
"VICE Guide to Everything"
came around or the HBO show
came around,
we just opened up
that VICE story bible.
- And then repurposed them.
- And then repurposed them.
I mean, a lot of things
were reshot.
But when it was republished,
the credits at the end were
taken off of everything,
and mostly it was interns.
They'd have them set
up every one of these pieces.
It literally had been done
five, six years prior.
I'm Chantal from
the VICE office in Brooklyn.
I'm Katie from
the VICE office in Brooklyn.
I'm Chelsea from
the VICE office in Brooklyn.
- Brooklyn.
- Brooklyn, New York.
Our colleagues in China spent
some time with Enbo Fight Club.
Our colleagues over at
VICE Colombia explored the
Indigenous queer community
at an Amazonian beauty pageant.
This is VICE China's
Out of Place: Part One.
This is Indonesian Death Cult .
This is Templo de Lucifer .
- Stay tuned.
- Stay tuned.
Stay tuned.
Which, in fact, I
mean, was a part of why I left.
I mean, I had spent years
kind of not being
credited for my stuff,
not being reimbursed
for my stuff.
And on top of
it, like, you know,
I was told for a whole long time
that they were gonna stop
with this Spike Jonze
kind of pitch, you know,
and that they'd give
credit where credit was
due, and they did not.
I mean, there was none of that
at any point.
So at some point,
you're like, "You know what?
I'm out of here.
What's the purpose?"
Hearing Santiago talk
about the Shane production
reminded me of this infamous
David Carr piece on VICE.
It was the first time
I ever heard someone call out
VICE's bullshit style
of quote-unquote "journalism".
If you're a CNN
viewer and you go,
"Hm, I'm looking at human shit
on the beach."
I'm going to tell you one thing.
I'm a regular guy.
And I go to these places and
I go, okay, everyone talked
to me about cannibalism.
Right? Everyone talked to me
about cannibalism.
Now I'm getting a lot of
shit for saying what
cannibalism stuff, whatever.
Everyone talked to
me about cannibalism!
Yeah, most of my boys,
they would drain the blood
from an innocent child and
drink it before going to battle.
- So you kill the child?
- Yes.
- And then you drink the blood?
- Yeah.
I lifted it up to the temple.
I'm gonna eat it.
That's fucking crazy.
So our audience goes, "That's
fucking insane, that's nuts."
And New York Times meanwhile
is writing about surfing.
And I'm sitting there going,
you know what,
I'm not gonna talk about
surfing. I'm gonna talk
about cannibalism.
- 'Cause that fucks me up.
- Just a sec, time out.
Before you ever went there,
we've had reporters there
reporting on genocide
after genocide.
Just 'cause you put on a
fucking safari helmet and
went and looked at some poop,
doesn't give you the right
to insult what we do.
So continue, continue.
I'm just saying that I'm
not a journalist. I'm
not there to report.
Obviously.
This
interview really changed
the culture at VICE.
It went all around the office,
and for the first time,
we'd seen our bosses
get spanked in public.
The immediate reaction
from the top down
was that we needed the
respect of real journalists
like David Carr.
In retrospect,
it was the right instinct
to consider accountability
as journalists.
And this kicked off perhaps
the most productive era
at VICE since Gavin left.
Hi, I'm Shane Smith. We're
here in the offices of VICE.
We shoot a lot of stuff here.
These are all the magazine
covers over the years.
We've been doing
this a long time.
We started out as a magazine,
then we went into online video.
Most recently,
our YouTube channels
like VICE, Creators Project,
Motherboard, Noisey.
But what I want
to show you today
is something brand new
and really exciting.
We're gonna go check it out.
Come with me.
Come with me.
After the rise of
VBS and verticals like
Munchies and Noisey,
Shane's next trip
was VICE on HBO.
And with the Dennis Rodman
North Korea episode,
VICE's power was undeniable.
I saw you there
You were walking
down the street
You stay awake,
Shane had combined
hard-hitting, front line news
with insane access
and entertainment value.
I saw you there,
You were walking
down the street
Walking downtown
Make me dance to the beat
While they preserved
the integrity of the
VICE on HBO show,
Shane spun a multitude
of businesses off the
reputation of that show,
and every investor
wanted a piece.
One of the most successful
ventures was VICE News.
And its most decorated
journalist was Simon Ostrovsky.
- Simon, hi.
- Yeah, hi.
My name is Shane.
I'm from America.
We're here with our friend
Simon. We've been on a
train for a long time.
We're going a bit goofy.
At the VICE office,
they had a screen at the entry
where you would see
a part of this story on loop
where I'm riding
the train with Shane.
The interim between
sort of mildly friendly drunk
and psychopathically
pull-your-eyeball-out drunk,
there's this sort
of level of like,
"I hate your fucking guts.
No, you're okay.
"We're buddies, we're buddies.
I want to kill you."
So you've got to stay
somewhere in this gauge.
I remember
seeing this clip.
We were like, "Oh, shit,
this is Shane's, like,
serious news friend."
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So everybody at VICE thought
me and Shane were super tight,
- Yeah.
- which was not the case.
How did you meet
Shane and come to VICE?
Shane saw something
that I put out on the BBC,
which was an investigation
into the use of North
Korean labor in Russia.
We headed further along
the road into the forest,
and before long,
we began to see signs
of woodcutting activity
in the area.
After four hours on the track,
we finally found a group
of North Koreans hard at work.
There were
these logging camps,
and these were
essentially, like labor
camps that were put together
with all the North
Korean propaganda,
and Shane's producer
saw that report,
knew that Shane was obsessed
with North Korea,
and he was like,
"Can you produce this for Shane?
"We'll do a whole thing
for this thing called VBS TV."
You know? And I'd never heard
of VICE at that point,
so I had no idea who Shane was,
and he comes in,
and the first thing he does is,
like, start telling me how...
awful and bullshit the BBC is,
because I think he had a
really big chip on his
shoulder about legacy media.
Yes. I was in a hot
tub with him once,
and he told me that him and Elon
Musk were gonna buy the BBC,
and I was like, "Isn't that
a government channel?
"Like, wouldn't you have
to buy like England first?"
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's a public broadcaster.
You can't buy the BBC.
It's, like, ridiculous.
Probably one of
the most embarrassing
incidents of my entire life
took place on that
very first shoot.
We're standing in at one
of these remote North
Korean labor camps
and there is a North Korean guy,
and Shane walks up to him,
and he starts singing
this national Korean song.
And he starts going...
And I'm like, "What is happening
right now? What are you doing?"
Okay.
I think kind of nobody
knew what they were doing,
so there were no rules.
We could just do
whatever we wanted.
It was the Outback
Steakhouse of media.
No rules. Just right.
Until it all
fucking went to shit.
- Yeah.
- You're an actual journalist.
In your opinion,
what do you think
was that secret sauce
that you guys figured out
on the news side?
Well, so we figured out,
A, that if you go places
and show things from the ground,
people will watch.
You don't even have
to release it on the same day.
You don't have to be first.
You just have to tell a story.
Let's say there was some
kind of a pro-Russia protest
that erupts outside
of a Ukrainian naval base
that's being held hostage
by the Russians, right?
In the
scenes of escalating
violence in eastern Ukraine
this one is
particularly sobering.
CNN has a 2pm deadline,
so they film a
few shots of B-roll,
they go back and they put it
on TV the same day.
We stayed there all day,
developed characters to see
what would happen to them,
like what was their fate.
A bunch of guys put him
into the back of the car.
It doesn't look
very official to me.
And we tried to use as
little voice over as possible.
You know, we tried to let
all of the people
that we were filming
speak for themselves.
And sure, we didn't
put it out as fast as CNN did.
We put it out the
next day or two days later,
even three days later.
Our viewers didn't care,
because they were
seeing something that
they never saw before.
Russia! Russia! Russia!
Like they
were seeing what people's
lives were actually like.
We didn't get a chance
to thank--
we wanna thank Eddy Moretti, we
started the whole show together,
and our show runner,
Vijay, who is awesome.
When the company
really got supercharged
and started to win awards,
a lot of it was your work,
you know, especially
in the Ukraine.
Thank
you for saying that.
It was really jarring
when VICE News got taken over
by this corporate hack
named Josh Tyrangiel.
The reason that HBO
and the Showtimes of the world
were interested in VICE
as a news outlet
was because of the
initial VICE News team
that I created with a bunch
of other people.
And so it was really
weird when the guys who
sort of created the buzz
around the news operation
at VICE all get thrown out.
It was all about
loyalty for him.
That was Josh
Tyrangiel's position.
"We have to get
rid of the old team.
"Everybody has to sort of follow
my each and every command,
"and I need to know that
they're going to be loyal
to me and to me only."
But he couldn't
like, really fire me
like he did the rest
of the VICE News team.
I was, you know, too big a deal.
I'd spent three days,
you know, in a cellar
with a bag over my head,
getting the shit kicked out
of me by militants in Ukraine.
Josh was not able
to fire me like you know,
because it would
have been a bad look.
So he just tried to make
my life so miserable
that I would want
to leave myself.
He made my raise conditional
on me moving to London.
He wanted to recalculate
my salary into British pounds,
but the pound was collapsing
at the time because of Brexit.
- Yeah.
- And I was like, "Okay.
"Well, you can't use this
calculation from a month ago
"when you gave me my raise.
"That's a twenty percent pay cut
into nothing."
- And you had to move to
London? - And I had to
move to London for it.
And you know who all
of this was being done through?
Nancy Ashbrook.
You know who she is?
The Harvey Weinstein...?
The Harvey Weinstein HR lady.
Tough as bricks.
I mean, she was...
I remember the higher-ups
at VICE were, like, quite
proud that they got her.
And I was like, "Dude,
it's the Harvey Weinstein--
"Like why are you
guys proud of this?"
Like, "Yo, she's fucking sick."
Yeah, and Shane was
always saying stuff like
that about his new hires.
But, you know credit
where credit is due.
There was a sweet
moment in, like, 2015
where every legacy media
around the world
was, like, interested
in what VICE was doing.
- Which to me, only
makes it more tragic - Yes.
that as soon as they had
cracked that code,
they threw it all
out the window.
You know like some people
don't learn from their mistakes.
VICE doesn't learn
from its successes.
So we still have the long-form
VICE News documentaries that
you know us for,
but we're also gonna be doing
a lot more short-form stuff
breaking news,
live-streaming news,
and then we're gonna have a
whole halo of text and photos
and social media around it.
You're gonna get all that stuff
you know VICE for,
but also a lot more
VICE News. Bango.
2014 was the
beginning of VICE's
peak financial success.
Shane had convinced everyone
that VICE was not only the
future of digital media,
but also news and journalism
in this country.
Why is VICE worth so much
fucking money?
- Yes.
- $4 billion.
- $4 billion.
- They got a word in.
- More than $4 billion.
- Okay. $4.4 billion.
- There you go.
- All right. Okay.
So that's $400 million.
- I'm not good at math.
- You just rounded it down.
- We rounded it
down. - Why? Because
you guys are mean.
- No. Okay. - If
you were nice,
you'd say "five."
- Okay.
- You'd round it up.
- Ten.
- Anyway...
- Ten.
- Ten.
- Ten.
- That's what I would say.
Yes.
'Cause I'm Shane.
So the whole thing is, is we
sit there, and we said, "Okay."
In 2014,
VICE sold a ten percent share
of VICE Media to A+E Networks,
a joint venture of
Hearst and Disney,
for $250 million,
valuing the company
at $2.5 billion.
In the same year,
Shane was compensated
to the tune of $78,482,292.
Then in November 2015,
news broke the A+E cable
channel H2 would be
rebranded as Viceland.
A month later,
Disney doubled its stake
in VICE Media to $400 million,
and the company
was valued at $4 billion.
The next year, in 2015,
it was reported that Disney
offered to buy VICE
for $3 billion, but
Shane declined,
claiming that in
the next decade,
VICE would be worth $50 billion.
I used to have a personal
relationship with Shane.
I looked up to the
guy and trusted him.
For years, I requested an
accounting of my residuals,
and there was no
response from VICE.
But I never bothered Shane.
When VICE started to
miss payments to
employees and vendors,
I caught wind and hired an
auditor to look into my case.
By the time the auditor
discovered that VICE owed me
hundreds of thousands of dollars
and never reported it,
they went bankrupt.
I reached out to
Shane about this,
and this was his response.
Eventually, the story became
bigger than my residuals,
and I started to ask questions.
But the only question he ever
bothered to respond to was this.
We're about to show you
financial documents
we received from a whistleblower
who declined to appear
in this documentary.
In late 2016, Shane and VICE
went back to Disney,
looking to be acquired,
but the jig was up.
By the time Disney
did diligence in 2016,
all of VICE's numbers
were down across the board.
At that point, when the
cracks started to appear in
VICE's financial picture,
Shane doubled down
on his bullshit sales pitch
and took on even more money.
But with that money
came the pressure
to continue scaling the brand,
and we all felt it as creatives.
VICE is one of the few brands
that really connects in a
meaningful way with millennials
as their center sweet spot.
So I think that's--
it's the millennials
that we want to get excited
about our business,
and so VICE is the perfect fit.
For me, going Viceland,
it was a big mistake.
We were crushing the Internet.
The Internet's the future.
Why would you go
backwards and partner
with this bum channel A+E?
Like, I don't watch
anything on A+E.
Doing the worst thing
possible is hot.
Like, doing-- like,
'cause that's how he got them.
'Cause he was like, "I
will get the children
to watch television."
And they were like,
"Oh, oh, oh."
That's what got
things to the four billy.
They had to take it there,
which I respect,
but it was never gonna work.
Do you think
it had to go this way,
or do you think the culture
that, like, we all contributed
to could have survived
without this fucking flameout?
I just think like,
adults got in the room.
You know what I'm saying?
I think that grown-ups...
The cops came.
I think the cops came.
I'm serious.
And once the cops came
and were like,
"Let's do, like,
disruptive hyper-vertical
"like cloud-iterated,
end-to-end, snackable,
"stackable like
fucking content," then
like you're fucked.
People are like, "Alright,
how do we do this again?
"How do we formulaically,
algorithmically do this again?"
The way to stay ill is
to be like,
"No, we did that.
Let's do some new shit.
- "Let's do that."
- That's what I'm saying.
They were then being
like, "Well, here's
what the data says.
"Here's what the kids are into."
And then, like,
backing stuff into that.
That's not how you do it.
It really was coming from,
like Shane and Eddy Moretti
because they wanted us
to be more advertiser-friendly,
and that's when
we lost our voice.
In fairness to Gavin,
the reason he left was that
he didn't want any of this shit.
Bro, what do you think
Shane is doing right now?
Like, after going from
four billy to no billy
to like bankrupt?
If someone offers
you four bill, take it.
- Take it.
- Like, I get it.
It's kind of a flex.
Like, "No, $8 billion."
- Yeah.
- You know what I mean?
Like, that's sick,
but also like zero.
- I think it's gamblers'
way. - It's a
scam. Yeah. Go harder
I feel like Shane's gamblers'
brain was just like,
"No, I'm gonna fucking win
the next hand."
Just go fucking nuts.
I watched this fool
gamble in Vegas,
and it was like, we went for
the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight,
and we started
gambling before the fight.
He went down a
half million dollars
and then didn't even
go to the fight.
He gives me his
ticket, and he's like,
"Yo, go to the fight
without me, whatever."
I go to the fight, and
I'm there sitting with
fucking Paulie Walnuts,
half the cast of "The Sopranos,"
watching the fucking fight.
He went to his room
and got a private dealer,
opened up like,
nine bottles of fucking DRC,
and was just gambling
the whole time,
- never made it to the fight.
- You have a problem, sir.
Sir, you have a problem.
Eddy Moretti to me
is the one that creatively
tanked the whole shit.
Eddy Moretti and
his stupid hat, man.
- Spaghetti Moretti.
- Spaghetti.
I think, like,
the number one moment for me
that was the most magical
is like,
we were smoking a dip.
We were smoking
formaldehyde like right
outside the VICE office.
What's that high like?
I just have to stop and--
It's just like, not that fun.
You're just like, "Ahh."
Like, you just don't feel good,
which is kind of cool.
And I remember looking inside,
and we were smoking,
and I'm like, "Who is that
sitting in the lobby? I
recognize that guy."
Turns out it's Rupert Murdoch.
He was sort of courting them
on some level.
I was like in that
moment, I think,
when you're, like,
smoking a dip,
basically next
to Rupert Murdoch,
- Like, that's the fucking thing.
- - That's crazy.
But how long can
something like that last?
You know what
I'm saying? It can't.
As a person
who was at VICE for many years,
seeing how disorganized it was
and how a lot of it
was a house of cards,
I started to wonder
how this would end
and that it was possible that
there was a very, very bad end
because gamblers go up
and gamblers go down.
But once they go down,
they start to do crazy shit
to try and come back up.
When VICE started to experience
revenue shortfalls,
they began working in
the shadows with people
like Philip Morris
to create lifestyle campaigns
promoting vaping
as a healthier
alternative to cigarettes
because their metrics
said that vaping
was a more profitable business.
Miles Skinner worked on
the Philip Morris team.
I know a
lot of people who,
you know, have a bad taste
in their mouth about VICE.
I don't. I had a great time.
I had a great job.
I got to travel the world.
I got to be in really weird
rooms with interesting people.
You know, they had Virtue.
The version of Virtue
that was existing to that point
was more like, you
know, VICE content
that looked like VICE content
that was really ads.
This was creating
white label ad services.
In this episode of Rise As One,
our friends at Budweiser
sent us to Beijing
to see how a group
of local football lovers
are rallying their countrymen
to get out on the pitch.
Do you feel like
VICE pioneered a lot of
that, like, branded content?
It's funny because the
VICE I knew and loved
was a bankrupt magazine
that threw great parties.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know? And it was like...
hot girls, like good music.
Like, you know they had taste,
good photography,
all of that stuff.
I think they stumbled
into something that
became their future.
You know, we booked
nine figures in business,
and some of that was for Virtue.
And then some was when I
moved on to a different team
that was a... little
bit more clandestine.
- Yeah.
- You know?
And that was based around one
client, which was Philip Morris.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
You know how do we get
people to quit smoking
combustible cigarettes?
So, massive thought problem.
You know when they explained
their rationale,
it was of course,
get people to quit smoking
combustible cigarettes,
we create a market to sell them
non-combustible solutions.
And you know harm reduction,
you can spin it all ways.
You know Philip Morris has blood
on their hands.
Is the vape business
better for Philip Morris
than the
combustible cigarette--?
- Their metrics said yes.
- Ew.
We put together a strategy
that was around most
of these anti-smoking campaigns,
cessation campaigns.
It's telling people
to do something.
And that's what Shane
was always selling companies,
was that, "I know how
to speak to that kid."
What do you think is at the core
of that perspective?
To that kid you're talking to,
what do you think it is
that we were all selling?
Make the cool guy feel rich
and the rich guy feel cool.
- Yeah.
- And, you know, it's yours.
Yeah.
And you can rule, you know?
It's like, it works.
People were coming to VICE,
I felt, for two reasons.
One, 'cause it was cool and it
was like, "Tell us what's cool."
Two is, you figured
out the Internet.
And figured out you know,
how to get over on it.
You know? I mean, it was,
like, a lot of it was scam.
VICE
made a lot of money by
basically playing three-card
monte with Internet traffic.
And Taylor Lorenz,
who wrote Extremely Online ,
is an expert on this matter.
They did a lot of growth hacks
because they needed to,
because they had to deliver
those audiences.
So the metrics
were always bullshit.
Throughout like the early,
mid-2010s you know,
Facebook is just juicing traffic
to media companies.
They weren't able to
drive enough traffic
from their own pages.
So they would, like,
do these swaps,
where they would buy traffic.
Basically they would
like pay for traffic
that they could then
claim as their own.
It was like, "Well, let's
fudge the numbers this quarter.
"Yeah, we're gonna get
some traffic from here and there
"but like, it'll work out."
'Cause it was all like,
trickery and these like,
digital marketing,
kind of sleights of hand.
And it was about
sort of projecting success
and coolness and culture,
which is--
if you don't have the kind
of business to back it up
or the community to back it up,
then you're screwed.
I got an e-mail from
a VICE employee
that was very high up
in sales on an Apple campaign.
And Apple actually found out
that they were buying traffic
from Pornhub and
attributing it to their numbers.
Well, because they would do
VICE Media Network or something.
They had all these ways of,
like, obscuring that.
And then when you dug into it,
you're like, "Okay, but
that's not VICE dot-com that
you're talking about here.
"You're talking about all these
other weird websites."
So that you can claim
their numbers.
Yeah. It's insane
because the people at VICE
didn't even tag it to the dates
of the campaign correctly.
- Wow.
- Like, they
were that negligent.
Yeah.
Not only
was VICE negligent
in reporting fake
Internet traffic
on a million-dollar
ad campaign for Apple,
but it was malicious
in its direction of employees,
like Mitchell Sunderland,
who VICE fucked so badly
that he ended up
having to change his name.
Mitchell Sunderland
was a staff writer
and an editor at VICE,
might have been 2018.
A mutual friend of ours walks
through the door,
and she goes, "Oh,
my God. What's this shit
going on with Mitchell?"
And I was like,
"What are you talking about?"
She's like, "Google it."
Every fucking news publication
has an article.
"VICE's Mitchell Sunderland.
"Email thread with neo-Nazis,"
blah, blah, blah.
All this stuff.
So like it doesn't
look good for Mitchell.
Mitchell was given
a directive by VICE
to maintain relationships
with Ann Coulter
and Milo Yiannopoulos,
who had actually written
for VICE in the past,
to cede VICE
articles to Breitbart
and other right-wing
publications
because allegedly,
- they had better
traffic than VICE
did. - Yeah.
People who were studying traffic
at the time
were seeing that
right-wing people
would be more likely
to click on a VICE link
if they saw that
the person posting it
was railing on VICE
rather than if they were saying,
"Look at this great thing
that VICE is posting."
Nobody bothered us, you know
as long as we were earning.
I mean, you've been
to the London office.
We were in a separate building
like, down the block
and around some weird
little Shoreditch alley.
And, you know, our seats
in London were...
We were sitting with
or right above the guys
that were starting
the work with Saudis.
It was at the
Saudi consulate in Istanbul
that Jamal Khashoggi
met his brutal end.
He'd been lured there
to discuss paperwork
for his upcoming wedding.
But he was strangled as soon
as he entered the building
by a team of Saudi assassins.
- I was privy
to a little bit
of it. - Yeah.
You know. I saw maybe
one of those briefs, and
it was very, very early,
and it had to do with tourism
and their ultimate goals
of making it an inbound
tourist destination
for people under 35.
Camels hold a very special place
in Saudi Arabia's heart.
They've been used for
centuries as transportation,
food, even as currency.
This annual month-long
celebration of everything camel
is a chance to see and be seen
for the country's elite.
Saudi Arabia's tourism board
paid VICE millions of dollars
to make a video
covering camel races.
Arabian camel
racing has been around
since the 7th century,
but has grown in popularity
in recent years
due to the huge prizes on offer.
World leaders and dignitaries
enter their prized beasts.
They actually
trick a VICE journalist
to go post this episode.
I've learned, I mean,
they call us producers, right?
- I mean, I was a host.
- Mm-hmm.
I guess I was a content creator.
They've just decided
that I should ride.
The person had no idea
that it was a fluff piece
for Saudi Arabia's
tourism board.
This is a
time of massive flux,
so how better to deal with that
than to remind yourself
of your roots,
your regional identity,
and celebrate the camel.
They
would just film the person's VO
and have the person say things
that they needed
for this tourism video.
As I watched
the highly choreographed
closing ceremony,
it was clear that in
modern Saudi Arabia,
camels remain important.
They may not be a main source
of transport or food,
but to Saudi's elite,
like Naif and the
country's leadership,
they're a source of
national pride and even
regional solidarity.
You know, that's another three
card monte, VICE, kind of...
you know, that's
an old standard trick.
I haven't talked publicly
about VICE hardly at all
for, like, various reasons.
Oh.
But also because
I'm worried that if I do,
I'm just going to
talk so much shit
and I'm never going
to be able to stop.
Are you excited
of the idea of meeting MBS?
Of course.
He's our new king.
We are moving with him.
We are changing with him.
For the better.
What we look at
is saying, okay, when I
say partner with brands,
I mean partner,
like production partner.
So we make it together.
We exploit it together.
And that could be a TV show.
It could be a short form.
It could be long form.
It could be a film.
As revenue was falling,
Shane doubled down on the
further narrowing of the brand.
Everything needed to feel like a
sibling of the VICE on HBO show
because urgent,
salacious journalism
was the one thing investors
and legacy media understood.
Let's talk about
what you're doing.
Now, there's been, like,
90 articles about your efforts.
Mostly, "We're
going to fuck shit up.
"We're going to fuck the shit
out of things.
"Fucking shit, shit, fuck,"
stuff like that.
So what are you doing?
- Fucking shit up.
- Okay. Alright.
What we're famous for is giving
over, Dylan going electric,
giving over the
company to people...
Like, for example, a lot of
people who are doing TV,
all the people
who are doing our monetization
have never done anything in TV
and, or TV monetization before,
and that's our strength.
- That you don't know anything?
- Exactly.
- Okay.
- Ignorance is--
Now, you do have some executives
they've brought in th--
Yeah, on the business side,
for sure, because as we grow,
we're doing a lot
of international TV deals,
a lot of mobile deals.
We don't want to get hoodwinked,
so we have people coming
over from Discovery and
other companies,
but I'm talking about
on the creation side.
So you have people
that don't know anything--
- Correct.
- And the point being,
we're so stupid,
we can't fuck up?
- Correct.
- Okay.
It seems
strange watching Shane talk
about how he installs
creatives who don't know
what they're doing,
but it was code
for the existing VICE creatives
like myself and the people
who worked on our show.
It was all posturing
to make it seem like he
was going to retain the
punk rock essence of VICE,
but in fact,
he was installing
parrots on every show.
We ended up having to answer
to a show runner
that came from
Cesar Millan the Dog Whisperer.
This guy was on this episode
encouraging my brother and I
to stay at the Sausage Castle,
despite our protests about what
Mike Busey was doing to people.
Now, that's what I call
"fresh off the boat", brother.
What's up, man?
And for some reason,
these white dudes always want
to remind me that I'm Chinese.
You gotta get control of
this shoot, there's guns
going off everywhere,
and son's throwing grenades.
Someone's throwing grenades.
I mean, son was
throwing grenades,
and I was really like, man,
we really need better gun
control laws in this country.
You're going to take
your finger, and...
- Wait, wait,
wait. Please don't
shoot. - Oh, damn!
At one point,
they almost shot our DP,
- Christopher Valona .
- You okay, CV?
Yeah, I'm okay. I
heard, like, it's like the war.
Welcome to my house.
And we were
still asked to finish the scene.
I didn't know
that you were gonna shoot.
I was going to come in
with a countdown, LA.
Okay. Like,
I'm getting ready to shoot.
Everyone stand by,
so you don't shit yourselves.
This is
what Jesse was talking about
when he said Shane
became P.T. Barnum
selling the freaks.
It wasn't the same voice
that Gavin, Jesse, and Amy
had crafted with satire
and a subversive purpose.
It wasn't even weird for weird.
It was weird for money,
and I wanted out.
Go over to the camera
and say that in Chinese.
- Into the cameras.
- I don't--
Just make some shit up and say--
make it sound Asian.
Allow the sake
to flow down her juicy pooper.
Into LA's mouth.
Open up wide, LA.
- Sake fruit salad.
- This fucking sucks.
This is the
sake fruit salad here.
I'm sorry. This sucks.
What's up, dude?
Hey, mind if I
talk to you for a second?
No, it's fine, man. I mean, my
thing is really, I just like...
You know, man,
this isn't my thing.
It's just like, I feel like that
you're a hilarious dude,
and all this shit is hilarious,
and it's fun to be here.
But you just got to be careful
not to use people.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you're using LA.,
and he's kind of this,
like, funny Black guy
with a big stomach.
You're using the Asian
girl to come, like,
speak Chinese on camera.
You just got to be careful
about the way you use people.
And the women like--
you know what I'm saying?
Well, behind all this
shit, man, honestly,
- we're all
from different
walks. - Yeah.
Black, white,
Christian, atheist.
You hung out with Jews today,
Asians, dumb like me.
- Yeah.
- And the whole thing is,
we all find a common ground
in our just being that outsider.
For me, watching and being
a part of it, I'm uncomfortable.
And I feel like people who watch
this are gonna laugh at you.
They're gonna laugh at LA.
They're gonna laugh
at the girl with the melons.
But I think you should
just think about, what is
it you're trying to say?
- I apologize for any
- Don't--
- But I do, man.
- Thank you. We're good.
Thanks for coming.
While VICE had me boxing to
sell ads at their upfront,
I was fighting their
lawyers behind the
scenes for my residuals.
We chased it for years.
But by the time VICE
finally acknowledged the debt,
they were bankrupt.
I challenged the bankruptcy,
made my claim,
and although
they never paid me my money...
I traded that debt
for the rights to my show
and cancelled out
my NDA with VICE.
By having that
footage and freedom,
I was able to make
this documentary.
I traded hundreds of
thousands of dollars for the
right to tell this story.
People ask me all the time
why I went to VICE
despite people
like Choe telling me not to.
I went to VICE
because at one point,
it was fucking amazing.
It was a place you could
be weird and have a voice
and for lack of a better term,
be your goddamn self.
It was like
Professor X's School for Mutants
or Bruce Wayne's
Gotham orphanage
or Derek Zoolander's School
for Kids Who Don't Read Good.
That's why we all went,
because we didn't
fit in anywhere else.
And despite this
insanely negligent,
borderline malicious
environment,
a lot of good people
did a lot of good work.
VICE gave us a home
to tell stories from the gutter,
and the hope was that
by telling these stories,
you could change shit.
We
had a purpose, and VICE
made a brand out of it.
But once that brand
became bigger than the people
and the stories and
the multitudes it
hoped to contain...
It's not this, like,
precious thing,
but it's this thing
that's like-- it's a, it's a...
It was worthless .
The world is full
of stories like this.
I saw a lot of them
on Huang's World,
and in the end,
there was one salt miner in Peru
that reminds me
of my time at VICE.
In America, if you sell
one bottle of this pink salt,
like, six to eight ounces,
people are paying
upwards of $10 or $12 for it.
Did you know that?
So you guys are not aware
of the amount of money
they sell your salt for?
The desire
to scale Peruvian pink salt
or VICE magazine so
everyone can experience it
instantly kills that
thing you loved about
it in the first place.
There's a magical
number of people
who are meant to enjoy
or experience something,
and the second
you cross that threshold,
it becomes a pumpkin.
VICE is broke
because greed scaled it
to a point where it mutated
and no longer resembled
what made it special in
the first place.
Not everyone is gonna
get to smoke formaldehyde
next to Rupert Murdoch
at the VICE office.
You kind of just
had to be there.
Oh, I mean,
but these pants are weird.
Alright, you pick where it goes.
- Okay, right side for sure.
- That's pretty big.
Is this the biggest one?
- That's the biggest.
- Okay.
Here, I'm
gonna keep it there.
I'm just gonna line it up
just a little bit.
Yeah, yeah,
'cause it's a little slanted.
But isn't it going to,
like, isn't your body just...
I still want someone
to claim the panties.
- Oh, you feel it, huh?
- No, that's good.
Alright, try not--
try to hold still.
I'll chill out if you
put a couple fingers in there.
I might have to do it
to hold you in place.
Was that Amber Rose
that was telling everybody
that Kanye liked fingers
in his ass?
Yeah, yeah, she was
like, Mr. Finger in the
Booty Boy or something.
Most geniuses are left-handed
and like fingers in their ass.
I know a lot of geniuses.
Woo was on an episode
with us too, right, Nick?
- Yeah. - Before
we went to Taiwan
as a pickup.
Yeah.
Remember the guy
in China did some shit like,
"You a party boy?
"Yo, you're a fun guy, right?"
Then you were like, "What?"
He's like, "Yeah, you're
like a fun guy, right?"
We were in that bar that
gave us fucking... the balloons.
That was one of the guys.
- Oh.
- Yeah.
I remember, we go
to this underground fucking bar,
and I think we're just
gonna drink and stuff
and I look at the tab,
but they started putting
balloons on it,
and everyone was doing
balloons, and I was like,
"Oh, this is so sick."
Nitrous you were doing?
It wasn't like any
nitrous I'd ever done before.
It was like Chinese grade.
That shit
was not nitrous.
Yeah, I don't
know what it was.
- Is the tattoo done?
- Yeah.
- Oh.
- How's it feel?
You know, the very end of it,
- I felt a little sting.
- Yeah?
- But like, it feels--
- That was the finger.
It looks really good, though.
Go look at it.
Go look in the mirror.
Stunning.