TORONTO — In “Vice Is Broke,” a documentary that premiered on opening night of the 2024 Toronto International Festival, Eddie Huang charts the rise and fall of the youth media company that started as a scrappy free publication in Montreal, became the irreverent bible of Brooklyn hipsters in the aughts and was eventually valued at billions of dollars before declaring bankruptcy in 2023.

A cautionary tale about co-opting the counterculture, the documentary features interviews with key figures in the company’s history — including its controversial co-founder, Gavin McInnes, who was ousted from the magazine in 2008 and later founded the Proud Boys, the far-right militia. (Notably absent is former chief executive Shane Smith, who appears only via indignant text messages.)

For Huang, the issue is personal: The author, chef and filmmaker hosted “Huang’s World,” a food show on the Viceland cable network.

Q. Do you recall when you first saw the magazine and what your impressions were?

A. The first time I encountered it was around 2005 at my homie’s apartment [in the East Village]. We were smoking weed. It’s a thing: You pick up a magazine and you break up the bud on it. I was like, “Yo, this magazine is crazy.” At first, I didn’t understand it. I came from Orlando, Florida. I was like, “This is a magazine for ratchet white dudes.” He’s like, “No, it’s like, downtown culture.” It was in American Apparel all the time. From 2005-12 it was just like, if you were in New York and you were downtown, you’d end up at those parties.

Q. Why do you think it became so big?

A. They committed to the youth culture of the moment. That’s what Supreme, American Apparel and Vice did. They were an extension of places like [the Lower East Side bar] Max Fish. It was just a place for young people who had alternative ideas to congregate. Vice was a place you could just be yourself. And the weirder you were, and the more different you were, the more collateral and value you seemed to have to them.

Q. What motivated you to make this documentary?

A. It has been super sad watching the whole company implode. I’ve always been very conflicted about my time at Vice. I love the people I worked with, but management seemed to be caught between their financial ambitions and what the magazine actually stood for. They drew us in with a set of values that were countercultural, and then they were selling those values out from under the table. The impetus for the doc was when I started to see a lot of people being mistreated. I heard of so many friends who hadn’t gotten paid, or were fired without cause. When the bankruptcy happened, I saw my opportunity to get out from under my NDA. I’m a trained attorney. I knew enough to say, “Vice owed me money. I could probably trade that debt and get out from under my NDA and speak on everything that I saw there.”

Q. You got Gavin to participate. How did you manage that?

A. I got his phone number from a friend who is still in contact with him. Within a few hours, he called me. He grilled me about what my purpose was. I don’t agree with his opinions. I absolutely think he goes way too far. Gavin feels he has a right to tell a joke and say whatever he wants, but sometimes it’s not about whether you have the right to do it or not. It’s, “Should you do it?” He seems to care about exercising his rights in a very theoretically absolute manner. The other people at Vice used Gavin for a scapegoat for a lot of things, but when you really explore the rise and fall of the company, it’s Gavin’s voice and artistic bent and style that is at the core of Vice. They were looking for someone to bury, and Gavin’s easy, because he will bury himself. But his voice and opinions are so entangled and at the foundation of Vice. These companies like Disney are investing in the ideas of a Nazi. You cannot separate the two. Vice is this guy’s project.

Q. You experienced some of this when you went to Jamaica with Vice. Tell me a little bit about the pressure you faced to cover communities of color in a problematic way.

A. My sole purpose in going to Jamaica was to show a softer — perhaps more boring — side. I felt that a lot of immigrants and young people who wanted to see each other as whole human beings, as opposed to stereotypes, would appreciate an episode that was like, “Look, we’re not going to go to Trenchtown to see the gangs and the drugs. We’re going to see schoolchildren.” When I got back [from Jamaica], [chief creative officer] Eddie Moretti was just like, “Where are the guns? Where are the drugs?” I said, “Any time you go shoot a Black community, it’s a ghetto safari.” Then I got suspended. There was this big conversation when I came back about staying away from political things, focusing on food and being the fun time guy.

Q. When it comes to Gavin, people in the documentary offer competing views — he’s a racist, he’s a nihilist, he’s doing a bit. What do you think?

A. I will answer your question honestly. I don’t think anyone should agree with me and I don’t support anything he says, but he’s such an intelligent person. When you sit with him, there are moments of kindness. I spoke to women from his era [at Vice], they were like, “He was the guy that showed up for me when my father passed away.” I think he’s doing an Andy Kaufman thing. I think he’s doing it to make a point that none of us will know until the end. I don’t think there’s much truth to [what he says], but he’s oddly, extremely representative of a large segment of society. You see this radical conservative movement all around the world. I don’t know what Gavin’s plan is. I don’t know if it’s positive. I don’t think it is, but I do think this is some type of Andy Kaufman thing.

Q. It’s interesting that Shane is the one key figure who didn’t sit down with you.

A. He threatened legal action, sent text messages to me. He said a lot of things. Some of the texts are in the doc. I think Shane has a lot to say and wants to battle it out. But as is consistent with Shane, he always makes the smart business and legal decision. He’s not actually punk rock. He was always the salesman.

Q. In the story of Vice, do you think there was an inflection point where the demise became inevitable?

A. If there’s one moment that I think everyone can point to it’s the Viceland deal. The reason we were good, as [journalist] Simon Ostrovsky talks about in the doc, is that we could do whatever we wanted. We could post things whenever we wanted. But once our shows had to go through the corporate cable studio, they weren’t the same. The things that we were doing at Vice belonged on the internet — the swiftness, the quickness, the freedom and the ratchetness of it all belonged on the internet, and it belonged to the kids. Once it went to cable, it belonged to the adults.

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