By Daniel D'Addario
Eddie Huang looks back on the wild days of Vice
The title of Eddie Huang’s new documentary says it all: “Vice Is Broke.” The media company that defined counterculture sensibilities (while accepting investments from megacorporations) filed for bankruptcy in 2023. And Huang — the multi-talented auteur, cameraman and documentarian — begins his new film with a grievance.
First, Huang says in an interview, he had a personal falling out with controversial Vice CEO Shane Smith, the face of the brand and the mastermind behind scaling the company beyond its sustainability. (Huang declines to elaborate on the nature of the transgression.) Then he found himself owed money for his on-camera work for Vice, including the TV series “Huang’s World,” in which he traveled and experienced other cultures in the style of his role model and late friend, Anthony Bourdain.
“I’ve been asking for an accounting since 2018,” Huang says. “They delayed the issue and never paid me my balance. The bankruptcy was the moment where I thought, ‘I’ve been collecting all of this information for the past few years out of personal curiosity.’” Huang, with the leverage of the money he was owed, negotiated his way out of his nondisclosure agreement; this film is his attempt to show what it was like inside the complicated world of Vice.
