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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.

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?

2007.

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.

- 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 to 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.

- Thank you. 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 cancelling, 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.

And when he got to...

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.

So 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.
- 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 want to 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'd 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.

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.

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.

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.

Shane had combined
hard-hitting, frontline news

with insane access
and entertainment value.

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 voiceover 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.

But if they try to provoke us,
we will respond appropriately.

We didn't get a chance
to thank--

we wanna thank Eddy Moretti,
we started the whole show together,

and our showrunner,
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.
- Alright.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 showrunner

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.

Son'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 fucking 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 motherf*** 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.

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.

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.