Vice Is Broke

Directed by and featuring Eddie Huang, Vice is Broke plays out like the most venomous exit interview of all time. Huang served as a key contributor to the punk magazine Vice during its heyday in the 2010s. He’d made a name for himself as a chef, and appeared to have just the sort of personality that Vice would seek out back then. This was when the magazine was expanding its online footprint with immersive video reportage and outstanding documentaries. They were filing dispatches from war-torn Afghanistan and the hermit kingdom of North Korea. Vice reporters were doing drugs in the Amazon and interviewing high-ranking Taliban officials. On a weekly basis, they were hurling Molotov cocktails of rage, righteousness, and rebellion in the face of legacy media. All of it, according to one person, was done with the aim of making ‘the rich feel cool and the cool feel rich’.