Eddie Huang, former Vice employee, is bitter. This is evident throughout Vice Is Broke a documentary from an insider’s perspective. In it, Huang recounts his experiences rising to fame on his own accord (through word-of-mouth popularity of his cooking in dotcom era New York, and subsequently getting absorbed into Vice.
For the uninitiated, Vice was a grassroots “zine” style magazine that essentially wrote edgy articles about anything and became the epitome of sleazy cool. It exploded with the rise of the Internet and mutated from print media into a huge corporate machine. This, as documented in this film, appears to be where the wheels would come off, as the once-indie publication struggled with the realities of selling its soul to the giant media players.
But what’s possibly more significant is the grim personalities of the people behind the helm. The film is a series of chats with people at various levels of the organisation, but the most memorable is with one of the figureheads. A suited, bearded middle-aged white male, he is evidently sexist and racist and unlikeable. But Huang insists it’s all an act, that this man can’t possibly think these things. That may be true, but the ironic shtick got old about ten years ago.
Huang claims to be owed hundreds of thousands of dollars from his time at Vice but has not been paid due to the bankruptcy of the company. This gives the film a slightly annoyed tone, but moreover, it’s simply not that interesting and, given the once-groundbreaking reporting of Vice, should have been more. It’s a bit like a comedown from a party you regret.
2024, Eddie Huang
6.0
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