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Downloaded from
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Official YIFY movies site:
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You know, I'm curious though.
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You are actually the number one employer
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- of human beings in Williamsburg.
- Yeah.
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How does it feel?
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Good. But we first came to Williamsburg--
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it's a good story.
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So we started in Montreal.
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And we came down to New York
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in the dotcom sort of era.
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So we moved to North 4th
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'cause Triple Five Soul gave us
part of their warehouse for free.
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And at the time, this is like 2000
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and all the crack whores
were down there.
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And they were like
$5 blowjobs,
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like the lowest common
denominator shit.
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We used to be extorted by
a crackhead named Crazy Larry.
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And he would literally shit
on our stoop
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unless we paid him a dollar.
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So we had to pay him a dollar
a day, extortion,
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or he would shit on our stoop.
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You know what I loved about it
is Manhattan was right there,
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and here was completely lawless.
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Like, there was no law,
there was nothing.
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Like, there was a coke place here,
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stayed open all night,
you could go buy coke.
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What was it called?
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Kokie's.
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My favorite bar was,
there was this--
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- ...you ever hear about the Chex Cash?
- Yeah.
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So Chex Cash was two 16-year-old kids.
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They took an old, deserted
check cashing place on the water.
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Ninety-nine cent beers,
punk rock on a jukebox,
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and, fucking, you'd just sit by the water
and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon for 99 cents.
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Boom, that's fucking Brooklyn.
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Brooklyn was,
for I'd say a decade,
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the coolest 20-block radius in the world.
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I like how you just put the...
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Can we get a shot
of him putting the bone on the table?
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This is a guy who grew up
in a steak house here,
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where he's just like,
"I'm gonna put the bone on the table now."
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I came up as a chef
in an era
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where everything was shifting
underneath my feet.
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And I'll show you what you do.
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After watching Food Network
dominate food culture in America
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for the better part of a decade,
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food and travel exploded on the internet
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with websites like Eater
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and apps like Yelp.
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It was a hit, I mean a big hit.
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With all these new options,
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Food Network was becoming a joke.
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Oh, Lord.
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And a new voice had arisen.
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What do you think about
these guys like Emeril Lagasse
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and those guys
on the Food Network?
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Well, you're asking me to kick Santa Claus
in the crotch on television.
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I mean...
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I idolized Tony
because he humanized people.
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{\an8}How long you been surfing now?
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{\an8}You were the first.
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He broke stereotypes and centuries
of preconceived notions and prejudices
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with each one-hour episode.
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In the wake of his success,
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the Food Network scrambled
to find the next Tony Bourdain.
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{\an8}They even started a new channel
called The Cooking Channel
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{\an8}that went after young chefs
like myself.
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{\an8}How the hell have you been making money
here with all these deals?
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We have a good product.
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{\an8}At one point,
I was offered a series
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called Cheap Bites
with The Cooking Channel,
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but I balked when a producer said,
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"You could be the next
Asian hip-hop Guy Fieri."
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Every executive started coming
to my restaurant,
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but so did Tony.
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- What's up, Tony?
- How are you, man?
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How's it going?
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- All good, how's things?
- Good to see you, man. Good, good, good.
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Delicious.
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I didn't really know
what the fuck I was doing
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with all the attention
and started to say wild things.
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I was like Rudy Gobert touching
all the mics during the pandemic,
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not understanding the gravity
of the situation.
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{\an8}But Tony did.
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{\an8}He saw the food establishment
trying to kill my career
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{\an8}before it even really got started
and got my back.
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Tony took me to dinner
on the second floor of the Spotted Pig
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and told me one thing:
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"Eddie, at every turn,
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"they're gonna ask you to bite the dick.
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"And no matter what you do,
never bite the dick."
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And I didn't.
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{\an8}I'm Christine Laskowski
with Signovision Journal,
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{\an8}and tonight we're in Soho at
the McNally Jackson Bookstore.
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We're going to be hearing
from Taiwanese-American chef
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and author Eddie Huang
about his new memoir,
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Fresh Off the Boat.
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Let's go have a seat.
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I published a memoir
called Fresh Off the Boat.
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Then ABC bought my memoir,
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which became the first
Chinese-American sitcom of all time.
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- Excuse me?
- It's the American way, right?
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You know about that.
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{\an8}Fresh Off the Boat.
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Life started to get weird.
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Executives tried plugging me into boxes,
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but I never fit.
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I got a TED fellowship
and lost it about 48 hours
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into the conference
because I left to do a podcast
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with Asa Kira and David Choe.
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{\an8}I lasted about one week doing
a new show with Meghan McCain
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before they replaced me
with Baratunde.
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And despite Fresh Off the Boat's success,
I hated it creatively.
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I was out before the end
of the first season.
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At every turn,
I stayed true to myself,
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and the one place I felt at home
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was a place called VICE.
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I'm Shane Smith.
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I'm Gavin McInnes.
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I'm Suroosh Alvi.
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And we're VICE Magazine,
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and we're moving to New York City!
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"V".
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VICE was a lot of things.
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A digital content creator.
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Three million subs across brands
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and something like half
a billion video views.
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An ad agency.
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- Another round?
- Nah.
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I'm taking it slow.
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A news organization.
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A media empire.
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What's the mission?
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The mission is
to become the largest media company
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in the world and to not suck.
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But originally, it was a magazine started
by Haitians in Montreal.
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We were working at a
place called Voice in Montreal.
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It was a make-work project
for Haitian immigrants and us.
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And then after a while,
they owed us money,
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and they couldn't pay us,
so we took it,
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we dropped the 'O',
and called it VICE,
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and then that was it.
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So you stole the magazine
from a non-profit organization
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that was trying to help Haitians?
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{\an8}Correct.
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{\an8}Dude, that's kind of not that nice.
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{\an8}Yeah.
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VICE was successful for several reasons,
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but what they were selling,
if you ask Shane Smith,
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was cool.
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Every generation, you have a changing
of the guard immediately.
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Woodward and Bernstein
were the punks of their generation,
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and now they're the old guard.
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By definition, when you have
a changing of the guard,
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you have a different language.
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{\an8}This sales pitch took VICE at one point
to a $6 billion valuation.
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And Shane was looked at
like this Professor X-like media mogul
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who could get along with mutants
and businessmen alike.
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What a fucking guy.
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Thank you.
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Then it went bankrupt.
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The VICE publishing business is now
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going to operate as a smaller,
break-even business.
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A lot of people lost their jobs.
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A lot of people lost money.
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And some people like myself
never got paid what was owed.
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You could read about it here,
and here, and here.
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And I'm sure there'll be
an Alex Gibney-esque documentary
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with talking heads sitting on stools,
cutting the story into bite-sized pieces
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from mouth breathers
like this was WeWork or Enron.
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These people are risk takers.
They're impulsive.
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But VICE was different.
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At one point,
this was a free magazine
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that meant a lot to people.
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Not investors,
not the market,
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not the trades, not demographics
or numbers in a spreadsheet,
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but actual fucking people.
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VICE's existence challenged
everything we knew
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about journalism and brands.
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We invested in story.
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{\an8}And character.
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And showed that
with a "DIY fuck what you heard,
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"I'll see it for myself" attitude,
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you could get closer to the truth.
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But once it caught fire
and Shane saw the value,
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we all fell victim to a resource curse.
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The thing that I could see happening
was we get to New York,
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we lose our focus,
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and we start sort of venturing off
into the side projects,
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so much so that we forget the mag,
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which is the root of our everything.
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Looking at Shane's face,
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you could tell
this thing meant so much to him.
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It meant something to all of us,
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and we give our youth to this place.
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But I swear to fucking god,
it didn't have to end like this.
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I'm sorry I need you to clear this shot.
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00:10:01,210 --> 00:10:02,580
Yeah, thank you.
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00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:04,000
Zach?
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00:10:07,380 --> 00:10:10,290
Stay next to this dude, and
then keep taking pictures of the frame.
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00:10:10,380 --> 00:10:11,670
I wanna see
what it looks like.
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00:10:13,500 --> 00:10:15,290
What're you looking for in the frame?
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00:10:15,380 --> 00:10:17,210
- Just got to look fly.
- You got to look fly?
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00:10:17,830 --> 00:10:19,580
I feel like it's
a nice shot on you, bro.
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00:10:19,670 --> 00:10:21,290
Yeah, it's a nice shot.
Looks great.
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00:10:21,750 --> 00:10:23,170
- Let's do it.
- Alright, good.
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00:10:23,250 --> 00:10:25,080
- Dave approves the frame.
- Alright, let's go.
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00:10:26,630 --> 00:10:29,330
Wait, I hate like at the beginning
of documentaries
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00:10:29,420 --> 00:10:32,130
we can't use any
of the "Oh, do I look good? Oh, cool."
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00:10:32,210 --> 00:10:34,080
Cut to the interview.
I hate that shit.
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00:10:34,170 --> 00:10:36,000
None of that.
We start, we talk.
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00:10:36,080 --> 00:10:37,630
You don't want foreplay.
You just, like,
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00:10:37,710 --> 00:10:39,130
- rock it and roll.
- No foreplay.
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00:10:39,210 --> 00:10:41,210
Yeah, so what was the
last year you worked at VICE?
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00:10:41,290 --> 00:10:42,290
2007.
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00:10:42,630 --> 00:10:45,170
Oh, wow. Okay.
So, you like dumb, early VICE.
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Started in... I want to say '98.
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00:10:49,630 --> 00:10:50,630
Oh, wow.
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00:10:51,460 --> 00:10:52,670
Still in Montreal.
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00:10:53,330 --> 00:10:55,000
In the early days in Montreal,
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00:10:55,290 --> 00:10:56,960
I remember the loft,
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00:10:57,040 --> 00:10:59,920
and it was a bunch
of like punk rock dudes
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00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:01,460
who really loved Wu-Tang.
225
00:11:01,540 --> 00:11:03,580
Like they loved Wu-Tang.
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00:11:03,920 --> 00:11:06,210
And that's why they gave me the platform.
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00:11:06,290 --> 00:11:09,460
So, my first column
in VICE magazine was called
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00:11:09,540 --> 00:11:10,880
"Ask the Poindexter."
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00:11:10,960 --> 00:11:15,380
And it was fake letters written to me,
the Poindexter,
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00:11:15,460 --> 00:11:18,380
about like the most obscure hip hop facts.
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00:11:19,130 --> 00:11:22,000
It evolved into
an ad hoc position
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00:11:22,080 --> 00:11:23,500
of hip hop editor.
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00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:27,170
Because they were like,
we need someone that's a hip hop nerd
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00:11:27,460 --> 00:11:30,750
that's going to write about this
from a unique perspective,
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00:11:30,830 --> 00:11:32,630
even though my perspective
wasn't that unique,
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00:11:32,710 --> 00:11:35,880
because I was just trying
to pay homage to Ego Trip and On The Go.
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00:11:35,960 --> 00:11:37,500
And I have to say this,
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00:11:37,580 --> 00:11:40,330
because it's really like
those magazines raised me.
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00:11:40,420 --> 00:11:44,500
Ego Trip specifically was a massive,
massive, massive influence on VICE.
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00:11:44,580 --> 00:11:46,630
- High concept.
- Yeah, satirical.
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00:11:46,750 --> 00:11:49,380
So that humor,
that kind of self-awareness
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00:11:49,500 --> 00:11:52,580
was missing at the time
in a lot of hip hop journalism.
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00:11:52,670 --> 00:11:54,290
So, when I came on board,
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00:11:54,380 --> 00:11:55,630
what I kept saying was like,
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00:11:55,710 --> 00:11:57,670
"rappers are the funniest people
on earth."
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00:11:57,750 --> 00:12:00,290
Like they are the most vibrant,
funniest people
247
00:12:00,380 --> 00:12:03,040
with the best sense of humor,
the best references.
248
00:12:03,830 --> 00:12:06,080
All you need to do
is transcribe.
249
00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:08,880
- That's sick.
- And that started in '98,
250
00:12:08,960 --> 00:12:11,380
and I went until 2007.
251
00:12:11,630 --> 00:12:13,710
And then when the band
became bigger,
252
00:12:14,040 --> 00:12:15,750
I was like,
you know, I'm an artist,
253
00:12:15,830 --> 00:12:17,170
I'm signed to the label.
254
00:12:17,580 --> 00:12:20,670
I don't really need to be writing
music criticism for the magazine.
255
00:12:20,750 --> 00:12:21,790
- You know?
- Yeah.
256
00:12:22,290 --> 00:12:23,880
Wanna be by yourself
257
00:12:23,960 --> 00:12:25,130
And no one else
258
00:12:25,210 --> 00:12:26,500
Alright
259
00:12:27,920 --> 00:12:29,790
Alright
260
00:12:29,880 --> 00:12:32,170
Your quarantine album
you start writing,
261
00:12:32,250 --> 00:12:35,500
you just, you want wax now,
you know, like you're good, dawg.
262
00:12:35,580 --> 00:12:37,040
- That's different.
- That's better.
263
00:12:37,920 --> 00:12:39,000
Congratulations, man.
264
00:12:42,790 --> 00:12:44,880
Looking back in VICE Magazine,
265
00:12:44,960 --> 00:12:46,290
they let me do whatever I wanted
266
00:12:46,380 --> 00:12:49,000
because they knew
that they did not know this music
267
00:12:49,080 --> 00:12:50,630
and they did not revere
268
00:12:50,710 --> 00:12:52,460
- ...the music as much as I did.
- Yeah.
269
00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:55,830
And you would think that
you would write an article, it's VICE,
270
00:12:55,920 --> 00:12:58,250
people thought we just wrote this
and sent it in.
271
00:12:58,540 --> 00:12:59,750
Like no way.
272
00:13:00,130 --> 00:13:02,960
Revisions, edits,
this paragraph needs to go there.
273
00:13:03,080 --> 00:13:04,960
Like really, you know, rigorous.
274
00:13:05,040 --> 00:13:07,210
People never knew that
or it didn't come off
275
00:13:07,290 --> 00:13:08,790
because the tone was so spontaneous.
276
00:13:08,880 --> 00:13:11,630
But these things were really labored over,
at least for me.
277
00:13:12,170 --> 00:13:18,000
You know, Jesse was a really,
really rigorous and demanding editor.
278
00:13:18,170 --> 00:13:19,420
- Pearson?
- Yeah.
279
00:13:19,500 --> 00:13:22,500
{\an8}Yo, Jesse Pearson
brought that literary bent.
280
00:13:22,670 --> 00:13:25,790
{\an8}Him and Gavin merged
and they did something really special
281
00:13:25,880 --> 00:13:28,670
that should not be overlooked
because like--
282
00:13:28,750 --> 00:13:30,830
But that story gets eclipsed.
283
00:13:30,920 --> 00:13:33,500
At that time already,
so 2000,
284
00:13:34,630 --> 00:13:39,040
it was already starting
to rumble under the surface.
285
00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:43,000
I remember reading
Gavin's "VICE Guide to Hate".
286
00:13:43,380 --> 00:13:46,380
That's a very important article
in the sort of journalistic bent.
287
00:13:46,460 --> 00:13:48,670
I remember reading that
and being like, "This is weird."
288
00:13:48,880 --> 00:13:51,330
Like some of it's funny,
some of it's,
289
00:13:51,420 --> 00:13:53,750
you know, today you would say
like edgelord or whatever.
290
00:13:55,250 --> 00:13:57,330
I don't know what he does now.
I don't follow.
291
00:13:57,500 --> 00:13:59,380
But in those days,
292
00:13:59,460 --> 00:14:02,080
he was a hysterically funny writer.
293
00:14:02,210 --> 00:14:05,920
So, when he wrote
the "VICE Guide to Hate", it was funny.
294
00:14:06,420 --> 00:14:09,080
You know, so you kind of like,
you felt uncomfortable.
295
00:14:09,380 --> 00:14:10,670
You were like, "This is weird."
296
00:14:10,750 --> 00:14:12,250
Like, "What does he really think?"
297
00:14:12,420 --> 00:14:14,420
I think that was the question
on our minds.
298
00:14:14,830 --> 00:14:17,960
Does he really think this,
or is he being funny?
299
00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:21,790
Which as you know is the strategy
behind a lot of hate speech,
300
00:14:22,130 --> 00:14:23,750
even today, right?
It's 4chan.
301
00:14:23,830 --> 00:14:25,580
It's the Pepe meme, right?
"I'm just joking."
302
00:14:25,670 --> 00:14:27,250
- Yeah.
- That's classic. But...
303
00:14:28,710 --> 00:14:31,750
before it went to shit or it went too far
304
00:14:31,830 --> 00:14:34,630
or before it became even just corny,
305
00:14:36,420 --> 00:14:38,420
Gavin was a really,
really funny writer.
306
00:14:39,420 --> 00:14:44,540
Like truly, a really,
really, really funny writer.
307
00:14:49,880 --> 00:14:51,880
Speaking to Dave 1 got me thinking.
308
00:14:52,580 --> 00:14:55,500
I knew that Gavin got kicked out
of VICE before I got there.
309
00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:57,960
And people actively
tried not to mention his name
310
00:14:58,040 --> 00:14:59,880
around the office like he was Voldemort.
311
00:15:00,540 --> 00:15:02,920
{\an8}But I never knew why Gavin got kicked out
312
00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:05,500
or how VICE ended up in Shane's hands.
313
00:15:05,580 --> 00:15:07,290
And watching this cautious,
314
00:15:07,540 --> 00:15:09,790
fantastic, curated man
315
00:15:10,420 --> 00:15:12,670
who was literally checking
the frame of the shot
316
00:15:13,170 --> 00:15:15,170
dance around the topic of Gavin
317
00:15:15,460 --> 00:15:17,580
while simultaneously dropping hints,
318
00:15:17,670 --> 00:15:20,630
made me realize I had a lot to uncover.
319
00:15:24,750 --> 00:15:25,960
I really liked that article.
320
00:15:26,170 --> 00:15:29,540
- Thank you. I grew up Orthodox Jewish.
- Yeah.
321
00:15:29,630 --> 00:15:30,920
So feel free
to ask me questions.
322
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:33,210
{\an8}But growing up Orthodox Jewish,
I would say...
323
00:15:33,790 --> 00:15:35,920
{\an8}sort of led the way to working at VICE
324
00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:38,040
{\an8}because I did not fit in there.
325
00:15:38,170 --> 00:15:39,750
I was a total misfit.
326
00:15:39,880 --> 00:15:41,750
And I was so sheltered.
327
00:15:41,880 --> 00:15:43,920
As soon as I was free of there,
328
00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:45,750
I was like,
"Get me the hell out of here.
329
00:15:45,830 --> 00:15:47,330
"And I want to do everything.
330
00:15:47,420 --> 00:15:49,500
"And I want
to do the weirdest shit I can do."
331
00:15:49,580 --> 00:15:52,420
I was always drawn to things
that were frightening
332
00:15:52,500 --> 00:15:57,210
because I just wanted to experience life
outside of this tiny bubble
333
00:15:57,290 --> 00:15:59,710
where everyone liked
and did the same thing.
334
00:16:00,920 --> 00:16:02,330
{\an8}Jesse Pearson,
335
00:16:02,420 --> 00:16:05,040
{\an8}who was the glue for everything
in the early days,
336
00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:08,130
he and I both worked at this
magazine called Index,
337
00:16:08,210 --> 00:16:10,040
and he brought a copy of VICE.
338
00:16:10,170 --> 00:16:11,630
It was the year 2000.
339
00:16:11,710 --> 00:16:14,540
And I just remember looking at it
and thinking, "What?
340
00:16:15,250 --> 00:16:16,750
"What is this?
341
00:16:16,880 --> 00:16:18,330
"Oh, my God, what is this?"
342
00:16:19,540 --> 00:16:21,330
So I thought, this is like a zine,
343
00:16:21,420 --> 00:16:24,040
but somehow with like,
amazing production values.
344
00:16:24,290 --> 00:16:27,710
Was the beauty of VICE that you could
just talk about anything you wanted there?
345
00:16:28,170 --> 00:16:33,500
Yes. I don't think they ever said no
to anything I ever wanted to write.
346
00:16:33,630 --> 00:16:37,540
The stuff you were doing,
like the guide to female ejaculation,
347
00:16:37,630 --> 00:16:40,540
{\an8}I have been seeing stuff
that you should be proud.
348
00:16:41,540 --> 00:16:43,670
So, you had the VICE guide to,
349
00:16:43,750 --> 00:16:46,080
you know, all different sexual acts,
350
00:16:46,540 --> 00:16:49,000
{\an8}but they didn't have one
for female ejaculation.
351
00:16:49,080 --> 00:16:53,250
So I said, "May I please add this
to the fantastic guides?"
352
00:16:53,330 --> 00:16:55,290
'Cause those were all pretty good.
They were funny
353
00:16:55,380 --> 00:16:56,960
and the advice was pretty solid.
354
00:16:57,040 --> 00:16:59,250
{\an8}So I just wanted to, you know add to it.
355
00:17:00,880 --> 00:17:04,250
{\an8}I realize talking to you
that I'm still really figuring out
356
00:17:04,330 --> 00:17:07,170
{\an8}how I feel about my time at VICE.
357
00:17:07,290 --> 00:17:09,920
They created this place that young people
358
00:17:10,170 --> 00:17:13,210
got to write and create
and be right and be wrong
359
00:17:13,580 --> 00:17:14,830
and figure their shit out.
360
00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:16,920
Yeah, it's a very different time now.
361
00:17:17,330 --> 00:17:20,460
There wasn't really
any cancelling, I guess.
362
00:17:20,540 --> 00:17:23,330
I mean, you could,
just because it wasn't so...
363
00:17:23,670 --> 00:17:25,540
it was such a small audience.
364
00:17:25,670 --> 00:17:27,040
And it was a free magazine.
365
00:17:27,130 --> 00:17:30,420
You could either pick it up and look at it
and like it or throw it in the garbage.
366
00:17:30,540 --> 00:17:32,330
- Yeah.
- That was it.
367
00:17:33,210 --> 00:17:35,330
At the time,
I had a lot of different jobs.
368
00:17:35,460 --> 00:17:37,750
I also had a blog called Teenage Unicorn.
369
00:17:37,830 --> 00:17:39,670
It's not online anymore.
I scrubbed it.
370
00:17:41,670 --> 00:17:44,210
But I have a picture
of a really fun barbecue
371
00:17:44,290 --> 00:17:46,790
that Gavin had where he, like,
he put his dick on a bun.
372
00:17:47,330 --> 00:17:48,580
And then he put ketchup on it,
373
00:17:48,670 --> 00:17:51,130
which is actually more offensive
because you don't put ketc--
374
00:17:51,210 --> 00:17:52,920
- Mustard.
- Mustard all the way.
375
00:17:53,460 --> 00:17:57,630
So, you know, I was more mad
about the ketchup than anything.
376
00:17:59,290 --> 00:18:03,790
I don't know. Does it sound terrible
if I just say it was funny?
377
00:18:03,920 --> 00:18:07,040
I'm sure somebody
can figure out an equation,
378
00:18:07,460 --> 00:18:09,830
like politically,
where that is wrong.
379
00:18:10,170 --> 00:18:13,330
- And there's probably many reasons--
- Well, it's wrong if it's not your friend
380
00:18:13,420 --> 00:18:15,250
and you explicitly ask them not to.
381
00:18:19,540 --> 00:18:22,130
After Jesse Pearson left and then I left,
382
00:18:22,250 --> 00:18:24,540
they got this giant influx of money
383
00:18:24,630 --> 00:18:26,460
and suddenly you could do
these crazy things
384
00:18:26,540 --> 00:18:28,290
but for a much bigger audience.
385
00:18:28,380 --> 00:18:30,830
And I kind of feel like
that's where things got iffy
386
00:18:30,920 --> 00:18:33,420
because suddenly you had like
a lot of people in the office
387
00:18:33,500 --> 00:18:36,250
who aren't all friend--
like long-time friends
388
00:18:36,330 --> 00:18:38,380
and you can't do the same
kind of crazy shit
389
00:18:38,460 --> 00:18:39,920
because you'll offend someone.
390
00:18:40,830 --> 00:18:42,580
Gavin likes rules, obviously.
391
00:18:42,670 --> 00:18:43,880
"Do's and don'ts."
392
00:18:44,380 --> 00:18:47,750
Some of the do's and don'ts
were hilarious and right on.
393
00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:50,380
But a lot of the do's and don'ts
394
00:18:50,460 --> 00:18:54,000
were very much like how to be a woman,
395
00:18:54,420 --> 00:18:56,540
how to be an attractive woman,
396
00:18:56,630 --> 00:18:59,080
how to be an attractive woman to men.
397
00:19:00,170 --> 00:19:05,500
But Gavin wasn't mean to me
or wasn't scary enough
398
00:19:05,580 --> 00:19:07,880
- to make me be like, "Whoa."
- Yeah.
399
00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:10,710
He would have stupid shit on his desk,
400
00:19:10,790 --> 00:19:13,880
you know... racist stuff,
401
00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:16,960
and I would just roll my eyes
'cause I was like,
402
00:19:17,040 --> 00:19:18,790
- he's like an edgelord, you know?
- Yeah.
403
00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:22,040
He'd say something shocking
and I'd say like, "Alright, Howard Stern,"
404
00:19:22,130 --> 00:19:24,380
- Like it just was his shtick.
- Yeah.
405
00:19:25,380 --> 00:19:30,960
Did you ever hear
about the... VICE initiation thing
406
00:19:31,040 --> 00:19:33,500
where they gave out like rings
and pins and stuff?
407
00:19:33,880 --> 00:19:36,130
I mean, I got a ring,
but I don't know how you guys--
408
00:19:36,210 --> 00:19:38,000
See, I never got a ring.
I got a pin.
409
00:19:38,080 --> 00:19:39,330
And that's fucked up.
410
00:19:39,420 --> 00:19:41,710
- I've never heard about the pin--
- I didn't want a ring.
411
00:19:42,380 --> 00:19:44,330
- Damn. You can think about it
- Let me tell you--
412
00:19:44,420 --> 00:19:45,710
while they do the new card.
413
00:19:46,420 --> 00:19:49,710
So Gavin had this thing
where he would hand out these pins,
414
00:19:50,170 --> 00:19:52,210
and he had like a Hitler doll,
415
00:19:52,500 --> 00:19:55,460
and he would be like,
he would dub you with it.
416
00:19:55,540 --> 00:19:57,040
And I was like, "Fuck no."
417
00:19:57,130 --> 00:19:58,250
Mark.
418
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:01,460
What was I saying?
419
00:20:01,960 --> 00:20:03,880
Something came up
with my therapist where I said,
420
00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:05,580
"Oh, but you're not supposed to do that
421
00:20:05,670 --> 00:20:08,580
"when you're my age," she was like,
"Where are you getting this from?"
422
00:20:08,670 --> 00:20:11,380
And I was like,
"Holy shit, from Gavin."
423
00:20:11,670 --> 00:20:12,920
Like 20 years later,
424
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:18,380
I've internalized...
these rules that are absurd.
425
00:20:19,210 --> 00:20:23,040
And there's a very infamous... story.
426
00:20:24,210 --> 00:20:26,080
It's so stupid.
427
00:20:26,170 --> 00:20:28,000
{\an8}Jesse and Lesley,
428
00:20:28,130 --> 00:20:31,040
{\an8}and me and Gavin were hanging out.
429
00:20:31,130 --> 00:20:34,040
Gavin just went on one of his comedy bits
430
00:20:34,290 --> 00:20:36,540
about like how a woman should look.
431
00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:38,670
And when he got to...
432
00:20:40,540 --> 00:20:42,330
the labia, he said,
433
00:20:42,420 --> 00:20:45,080
"Ugh, labia has to be
perfectly symmetrical.
434
00:20:45,290 --> 00:20:47,420
"Otherwise, it's just disgusting."
435
00:20:47,500 --> 00:20:51,790
And I just was like,
"Ugh, I keep-- like, come on already."
436
00:20:51,880 --> 00:20:54,540
And they were like,
"Oh, someone has asymmetrical labia."
437
00:20:59,170 --> 00:21:02,960
And I was like, "I don't know,
but like I'm just enough."
438
00:21:11,210 --> 00:21:14,580
Despite knowing what Gavin became
after his time at VICE,
439
00:21:14,670 --> 00:21:17,500
hearing Amy talk about
his errors is shocking.
440
00:21:18,330 --> 00:21:20,330
It's one of those things
that doesn't feel real.
441
00:21:20,420 --> 00:21:23,830
It doesn't make sense until people like
Dave and Amy paint the portrait for you.
442
00:21:24,500 --> 00:21:25,920
Looking at it in retrospect,
443
00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:28,790
you may be wondering why any of us went
to work at a place like this.
444
00:21:29,460 --> 00:21:31,420
For a lot of us,
we were rejected everywhere
445
00:21:31,670 --> 00:21:34,330
and spent most of our youth looking
for a place to be ourselves,
446
00:21:34,920 --> 00:21:37,250
even if the place
was founded by a guy like Gavin.
447
00:21:38,210 --> 00:21:40,000
You could see Gavin as a savior,
448
00:21:40,170 --> 00:21:41,420
a cult leader,
449
00:21:41,500 --> 00:21:42,960
or maybe just a chilly pimp.
450
00:21:43,210 --> 00:21:44,540
They never had a daddy,
451
00:21:44,630 --> 00:21:46,670
so when they call someone "Daddy,"
452
00:21:46,790 --> 00:21:48,420
that's everything they got.
453
00:21:49,170 --> 00:21:50,630
No matter what he does,
454
00:21:50,790 --> 00:21:53,330
he was the first person to see value
in some of these writers,
455
00:21:53,880 --> 00:21:56,210
and they'll always have
a place in their hearts for him.
456
00:21:57,080 --> 00:21:58,880
It's a tough thing
for people to understand
457
00:21:58,960 --> 00:22:00,500
who weren't in situations like this.
458
00:22:02,500 --> 00:22:04,750
Sometimes you love people that hurt you
459
00:22:05,170 --> 00:22:07,330
simply because they were
the first to love you at all.
460
00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:15,130
I'm curious,
not just in the context of VICE,
461
00:22:15,210 --> 00:22:16,790
like, what drew you to writing?
462
00:22:17,330 --> 00:22:18,960
{\an8}Reading, I think, drew me to writing.
463
00:22:19,040 --> 00:22:22,830
{\an8}I was drawn to reading first as an escape
from my life as a kid.
464
00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:24,380
{\an8}You know, it was like a safe place.
465
00:22:24,460 --> 00:22:26,330
I think that if you read enough,
466
00:22:26,460 --> 00:22:28,290
you've got a natural inclination to write,
467
00:22:28,630 --> 00:22:29,630
it just starts to happen.
468
00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:31,460
But writing writing,
you know,
469
00:22:31,540 --> 00:22:33,130
in terms of,
like, prose, journalism,
470
00:22:33,210 --> 00:22:36,710
started for me with punk rock probably,
with zines, certain zines.
471
00:22:37,210 --> 00:22:40,210
There was kind of a zine explosion for me.
And a lot of them were--
472
00:22:40,290 --> 00:22:41,630
not even
what you might call punk.
473
00:22:41,710 --> 00:22:44,080
They were more like,
some people call them hate literature,
474
00:22:44,210 --> 00:22:45,380
you know to some degree.
475
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:47,210
I was attracted to that stuff.
476
00:22:48,330 --> 00:22:50,170
Also, independent comics
were really big for me
477
00:22:50,250 --> 00:22:53,130
in terms of inspiring me
to like know that I could do something
478
00:22:53,290 --> 00:22:54,920
without having to have permission.
479
00:22:55,000 --> 00:22:56,960
When I read the old VICE shit,
480
00:22:57,040 --> 00:22:59,960
you weren't trying
to capture youth culture.
481
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:02,460
You weren't trying
to define youth culture.
482
00:23:02,580 --> 00:23:05,330
You were just sharing the shit
you were interested in,
483
00:23:05,750 --> 00:23:07,830
and because it was so specific,
484
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:09,380
it became representative.
485
00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:12,040
I think Gavin started it
before we even met him.
486
00:23:12,420 --> 00:23:15,540
And then I came in, and then I brought in
Amy Kellner and Lesley Arfin.
487
00:23:15,630 --> 00:23:18,330
And I think the four of us defined a tone.
488
00:23:18,420 --> 00:23:22,170
I always refer to it as,
like, hyper-intelligent valley girl.
489
00:23:22,250 --> 00:23:23,420
You know what I mean?
490
00:23:23,500 --> 00:23:25,830
Like, you know
you can drop continental philosophy,
491
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:27,670
but you also say totes.
492
00:23:27,750 --> 00:23:32,500
When you were there, it felt like
the wildest literary magazine.
493
00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:35,330
You know, like,
I would give this shit to my kid to read,
494
00:23:35,420 --> 00:23:36,420
to be like,
495
00:23:36,500 --> 00:23:38,210
"This is the literature of that time."
496
00:23:38,290 --> 00:23:41,040
"These are the romantic
poets of the early aughts."
497
00:23:41,210 --> 00:23:43,000
- That's cool. Yeah, that's great.
- Right?
498
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:44,670
Like, you have Miranda July in here.
499
00:23:44,750 --> 00:23:46,250
You have Ottessa Moshfegh in here.
500
00:23:46,330 --> 00:23:47,420
Natasha Lyonne.
501
00:23:47,500 --> 00:23:49,500
Like, this shit is a time capsule.
502
00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:51,670
So, those are,
those are of a certain era.
503
00:23:51,750 --> 00:23:54,540
I mean this one was really
controversial with some readers.
504
00:23:54,630 --> 00:23:57,040
- It's cops telling their own stories.
- Wow.
505
00:23:57,130 --> 00:23:59,880
"The bag is NYPD slang
for the full uniform.
506
00:24:00,460 --> 00:24:02,380
"If your bag is perfectly pressed,
507
00:24:02,540 --> 00:24:04,750
"crispy condition,
you're probably a pussy.
508
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:08,580
"Real cops wear busted-out uniforms
as a sign of experience and pride."
509
00:24:10,330 --> 00:24:12,000
Do's and don'ts, baby.
510
00:24:12,380 --> 00:24:13,960
"She's either an empowered slut
511
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:15,880
"or the kind of person
that will tell your boss
512
00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:18,000
"you made up the nickname Bald Hitler."
513
00:24:18,790 --> 00:24:19,790
Wow.
514
00:24:20,290 --> 00:24:22,540
{\an8}And, you know,
a lot has been said about Gavin
515
00:24:22,630 --> 00:24:24,960
{\an8}and his political views and as a person.
516
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:27,670
{\an8}Oh, yeah. I mean,
there were pieces in VICE
517
00:24:27,750 --> 00:24:29,670
{\an8}that were starting
to indicate conservatism
518
00:24:29,750 --> 00:24:31,630
even before I came in in 2002.
519
00:24:31,750 --> 00:24:33,380
There were little things here and there.
520
00:24:33,460 --> 00:24:35,630
So, I think Gavin was exploring
these ideas way earlier
521
00:24:35,710 --> 00:24:37,420
- than a lot of people think he was.
- Yeah.
522
00:24:37,580 --> 00:24:39,250
So, it was bubbling, yeah.
It was bubbling.
523
00:24:39,330 --> 00:24:40,330
And I think Shane...
524
00:24:42,420 --> 00:24:44,500
Fuck it, I'll just say it.
I think Shane was, like,
525
00:24:44,580 --> 00:24:47,130
jealous of Gavin being the face
of VICE for a long time,
526
00:24:47,210 --> 00:24:48,750
and he wanted some of that shine too.
527
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:50,670
And he saw this as a way.
528
00:24:50,750 --> 00:24:51,960
So, he made his move.
529
00:24:52,710 --> 00:24:54,540
- Did you have a ring at VICE?
- I had a ring.
530
00:24:54,630 --> 00:24:56,460
I lost it like a week
after they gave it to me.
531
00:24:56,540 --> 00:24:58,920
- You didn't give a fuck?
- Fuck, no. I'm not gonna wear that.
532
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:01,920
To me, it would feel like
wearing your own band's T-shirt,
533
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:03,290
you know, which is a lame move.
534
00:25:03,380 --> 00:25:06,210
I think they tried to
like, get our loyalty with it.
535
00:25:06,420 --> 00:25:08,630
And the only people
that ever thought it was cool
536
00:25:08,710 --> 00:25:11,630
were like the business people
that invested and like got a ring.
537
00:25:11,710 --> 00:25:14,790
And, like, of course,
you cornballs thought this shit was cool.
538
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:17,210
- And you're wearing it to this day.
- Yeah.
539
00:25:17,290 --> 00:25:19,130
Shane was a good businessman
in a certain way.
540
00:25:19,210 --> 00:25:20,380
Like, he could really sell.
541
00:25:20,500 --> 00:25:24,380
But his approach to selling, I always kind
of liken it to P.T. Barnum, you know?
542
00:25:24,670 --> 00:25:27,540
Where you're like,
a carnival barker, you know?
543
00:25:27,830 --> 00:25:29,710
Taking the freaks,
who were us,
544
00:25:29,790 --> 00:25:31,460
and selling them to the squares.
545
00:25:31,540 --> 00:25:36,540
He wanted consciously to win
that sector of culture over to himself,
546
00:25:36,670 --> 00:25:37,830
you know what I mean?
547
00:25:38,420 --> 00:25:41,290
I don't think it succeeded, you know?
548
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:44,960
After you left,
it's just kids with guns.
549
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:46,960
Well, that's kind of why I left.
550
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:49,290
I quit in 2010 because
551
00:25:49,380 --> 00:25:51,540
the bosses at that point,
552
00:25:51,670 --> 00:25:53,630
were wanting the magazine
to become kind of like
553
00:25:53,710 --> 00:25:55,330
a catalogue for the video content.
554
00:25:55,420 --> 00:25:57,130
And it was like
these attempts at hard news.
555
00:25:57,630 --> 00:26:00,460
Sending some kid to a country
that they'd never been to,
556
00:26:00,540 --> 00:26:03,830
and basically the thrust of these pieces
would be like, "It's scary here."
557
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:06,580
And I found that really irresponsible
and really othering.
558
00:26:06,670 --> 00:26:08,250
I was like,
"I don't want a piece of this."
559
00:26:08,330 --> 00:26:10,420
And that's a filter they chose to put on,
you know?
560
00:26:10,500 --> 00:26:11,960
To look at the world that way.
561
00:26:12,380 --> 00:26:14,040
Somebody went to Liberia,
562
00:26:14,130 --> 00:26:16,790
and they were talking about
how scary everything was.
563
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:26,880
This is like a civil war on steroids.
564
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:28,880
It's a post-apocalyptic Armageddon
565
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:32,540
with child soldiers smoking heroin,
cross-dressing cannibals,
566
00:26:32,630 --> 00:26:34,000
systematic rape.
567
00:26:34,500 --> 00:26:36,420
It's total hell on earth.
568
00:26:38,380 --> 00:26:39,460
And then like a week later,
569
00:26:39,540 --> 00:26:41,790
I saw an episode
of Anthony Bourdain's show at the time,
570
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:43,380
and he was in the same place,
571
00:26:43,460 --> 00:26:46,000
walking down the street, like,
"It's vibrant here, it's exciting.
572
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:47,750
"Gonna try some food
and meet some people."
573
00:26:47,830 --> 00:26:50,630
Just these two completely
different approaches to these places.
574
00:26:50,710 --> 00:26:53,330
I think I even told Shane this
at some point like, 'coolness',
575
00:26:53,420 --> 00:26:55,500
whatever you want to say about
that word and concept,
576
00:26:55,580 --> 00:26:58,000
and how complicated it is
and how problematic it can be,
577
00:26:58,080 --> 00:26:59,880
'coolness' is not
a renewable resource.
578
00:26:59,960 --> 00:27:01,880
You know, if you have it
and you want to sell it,
579
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:03,330
you can sell it once.
580
00:27:09,380 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaking to Jesse reminded me of the time
581
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:13,040
I went to Jamaica for Huang's World.
582
00:27:13,130 --> 00:27:15,080
I didn't like VICE's coverage
of Black people
583
00:27:15,170 --> 00:27:18,460
because it was always kids
with guns or dudes with drugs.
584
00:27:18,670 --> 00:27:20,210
I grew up working for a Jamaican chef
585
00:27:20,290 --> 00:27:22,670
at my dad's restaurant named Chef Andy,
586
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:24,420
and he was none of those things.
587
00:27:24,500 --> 00:27:26,540
I wanted to show the Jamaica
that he told me about,
588
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:28,500
so I visited schoolchildren
589
00:27:28,580 --> 00:27:30,130
and spoke to people
about Marcus Garvey.
590
00:27:30,500 --> 00:27:33,460
There is way more to Jamaica
than just the whole party
591
00:27:33,540 --> 00:27:36,580
and the hype life,
smoking weed and all of that.
592
00:27:36,710 --> 00:27:38,170
There's a lot more.
593
00:27:38,250 --> 00:27:40,380
But when I got back,
Eddy Moretti,
594
00:27:40,460 --> 00:27:42,250
the number two at VICE at that time,
595
00:27:42,330 --> 00:27:43,580
went off on me saying,
596
00:27:43,670 --> 00:27:45,580
"Where's the guns? Where's the drugs?"
597
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:47,250
"Where's Trench Town?"
598
00:27:47,790 --> 00:27:51,960
I told him I wasn't down for
his ghetto safari kids with guns bullshit,
599
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:54,000
and he suspended me.
600
00:27:54,500 --> 00:27:56,710
When I went back to Jamaica
for the reshoot,
601
00:27:56,790 --> 00:27:58,750
I put this clip in,
but they took it out
602
00:27:58,830 --> 00:28:00,880
because it made fun
of their approach to journalism.
603
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:04,710
Yo, if this was
any other VICE show coming here,
604
00:28:04,790 --> 00:28:05,920
it'd be like this.
605
00:28:08,790 --> 00:28:10,830
So, we are in the mountains
of Jamaica right now,
606
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:13,710
and this is very, very dangerous.
607
00:28:14,250 --> 00:28:15,920
Many people have died here.
608
00:28:16,670 --> 00:28:18,920
Thomas Horton has died here three times.
609
00:28:19,710 --> 00:28:22,130
VICE: HBO.
We go there.
610
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,290
Now, I always think that
a lot of what VICE has done
611
00:28:40,380 --> 00:28:42,920
has happened because
of your sheer will of it...
612
00:28:43,330 --> 00:28:44,540
Yeah, I think that too.
613
00:28:45,330 --> 00:28:47,580
I think...
I think because you're like...
614
00:28:47,670 --> 00:28:50,630
I mean, you know, it's part,
like this sort of...
615
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:54,080
part you know, having a vision,
616
00:28:54,170 --> 00:28:56,380
part P.T. Barnum hyping it
617
00:28:56,630 --> 00:29:00,710
and you know sort of willing everyone
to you know, to go along with you.
618
00:29:01,790 --> 00:29:04,710
Yeah. When you're starting out,
you have to definitely,
619
00:29:05,630 --> 00:29:09,210
you know be louder noise
than the other guys.
620
00:29:09,790 --> 00:29:10,830
You freak me out.
621
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:12,880
No, I'm the only one
that doesn't freak you out.
622
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:14,880
- Oh, that's right.
- So, you've forgotten that.
623
00:29:21,790 --> 00:29:24,170
There was a writer, Christi Bradnox,
624
00:29:24,670 --> 00:29:28,290
{\an8}who wrote the
"VICE Guide to Eating Pussy",
625
00:29:28,380 --> 00:29:32,500
{\an8}and I was like,
"This is what I want to write."
626
00:29:33,170 --> 00:29:36,460
It was like telling guys what to do,
or girls or whatever.
627
00:29:36,540 --> 00:29:38,630
I was like,
"This is exactly the type of shit
628
00:29:38,710 --> 00:29:40,540
that I want to do when I leave school."
629
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,250
It was so funny and really
like a celebration of women.
630
00:29:46,500 --> 00:29:51,460
And I just wanted to write
the kind of shit that VICE was writing.
631
00:29:51,540 --> 00:29:53,830
So, when I first started at VICE,
632
00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:57,630
I told Gavin, I'm like, "Look,
I don't know who Christi Bradnox is,
633
00:29:57,710 --> 00:30:00,790
"but I want to... this is
what I want to write one day.
634
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:03,000
"Like, I want to...
I want to be her."
635
00:30:03,080 --> 00:30:05,330
And he goes,
"I'm Christi Bradnox."
636
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:08,880
And I was like,
"Well, I still want to write like her."
637
00:30:09,750 --> 00:30:13,000
Gavin was always very, very funny.
638
00:30:13,460 --> 00:30:15,670
He's a very funny,
very charismatic person,
639
00:30:15,750 --> 00:30:17,250
for better or for worse.
640
00:30:17,500 --> 00:30:19,330
- Shane isn't.
- Yeah.
641
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:21,080
He went out with my friend.
642
00:30:21,170 --> 00:30:23,170
I don't give a shit
about talking shit about Shane.
643
00:30:23,250 --> 00:30:25,290
- Yeah.
- He went out with my friend
644
00:30:25,460 --> 00:30:30,460
and, like, bought her this
really ugly painting
645
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:32,380
that was like,
it wasn't a painting.
646
00:30:32,460 --> 00:30:36,210
It was like a sand art,
and she was like,
647
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:38,580
"Oh, Shane got that for me.
648
00:30:39,380 --> 00:30:41,540
"He said that, like,
Buddhists made it,
649
00:30:41,630 --> 00:30:45,460
"and it takes them, like, you know,
seven years to do every grain of sand."
650
00:30:45,540 --> 00:30:47,630
And I'm like, "I saw that at the airport."
651
00:30:48,500 --> 00:30:49,790
"But of course
he told you that."
652
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:50,920
- You know?
- Yeah, yeah.
653
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:52,920
Like, I don't care what you have.
Be normal.
654
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:56,170
Even when you have dinner with Shane,
he always will take my hand and be like,
655
00:30:56,250 --> 00:30:58,330
"This is about to be
the best meal you've ever had."
656
00:30:58,420 --> 00:31:00,710
- And I'm like, “Homie.
- Hundred percent, dude.
657
00:31:00,790 --> 00:31:01,960
"We're at Nobu, dawg.”
658
00:31:02,540 --> 00:31:04,040
It's, like, not even good anymore.
659
00:31:04,130 --> 00:31:06,170
This is a Japanese Cheesecake Factory.
660
00:31:06,250 --> 00:31:07,830
So, in that sense, like,
661
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,920
both Gavin and Shane do have
like this cult leader thing,
662
00:31:11,170 --> 00:31:13,170
and Gavin probably, like,
663
00:31:13,250 --> 00:31:16,170
could have been,
like a really good cult leader.
664
00:31:17,420 --> 00:31:21,880
But I don't really think
that Gavin believes in anything.
665
00:31:22,250 --> 00:31:24,250
I think he believes in jokes.
666
00:31:25,170 --> 00:31:26,290
My name is Gavin McInnes.
667
00:31:26,380 --> 00:31:30,830
So I'm judging the Air Guitar
Brooklyn Championships.
668
00:31:31,500 --> 00:31:35,790
My brother has Down syndrome, so I have
a bit of a soft spot for shit like that.
669
00:31:36,330 --> 00:31:39,500
I don't know how you could ever
take this seriously and not be a dick.
670
00:31:39,830 --> 00:31:41,040
You were humorous like--
671
00:31:41,130 --> 00:31:43,670
Yeah, it was like Mad Magazine
for grown-ups.
672
00:31:44,170 --> 00:31:45,580
At VICE we weren't journalists.
673
00:31:45,670 --> 00:31:51,130
In fact we probably ruined journalism
for the rest of the world
674
00:31:51,210 --> 00:31:52,710
- that came after.
- Yeah.
675
00:31:52,790 --> 00:31:54,960
Because we were not fact-checkers.
676
00:31:55,040 --> 00:31:58,000
This was all,
"Let's go someplace
677
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,790
"and infiltrate and become part of it,
678
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:02,380
"and then we'll report back."
679
00:32:02,460 --> 00:32:04,080
You have a duty as a journalist.
680
00:32:04,170 --> 00:32:05,790
We did not have that.
681
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:07,630
We did not have those skills.
682
00:32:07,790 --> 00:32:09,790
We weren't interested
in being that.
683
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:12,750
We were biased.
There was nothing journalistic about VICE.
684
00:32:13,250 --> 00:32:16,500
And I was super insecure,
you know?
685
00:32:16,580 --> 00:32:18,040
Like, I just wanted to, like...
686
00:32:18,130 --> 00:32:19,830
I just wanted like, guys to like me
687
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,210
and to, like,
feel like I was good at my job.
688
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:24,250
And so...
689
00:32:25,420 --> 00:32:28,460
Gavin, who was really like a true believer
690
00:32:28,540 --> 00:32:31,630
in, like anarchy and, like...
691
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:37,670
would make racist jokes,
I made them, too.
692
00:32:38,500 --> 00:32:42,330
Because I cared more about
being accepted by him
693
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:45,500
and feeling insecure and wanting to fit in
694
00:32:45,580 --> 00:32:47,710
than, like what--
than actually hurting people
695
00:32:47,790 --> 00:32:48,790
and what that meant.
696
00:32:49,380 --> 00:32:50,380
And...
697
00:32:52,170 --> 00:32:53,250
in retrospect...
698
00:32:55,460 --> 00:32:57,540
I was wrong.
699
00:32:58,000 --> 00:32:59,130
And like, it's not okay,
700
00:32:59,210 --> 00:33:02,170
but also, I can't go back in time.
701
00:33:02,790 --> 00:33:04,790
I just wasn't as smart
as I could have been.
702
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:07,210
You know, like
I cared more about being cool
703
00:33:07,290 --> 00:33:10,790
than I did about being right
or like kind.
704
00:33:12,580 --> 00:33:16,750
So I was curious,
what happened that day that Gavin left?
705
00:33:17,290 --> 00:33:21,830
Okay, Gavin had been gone for two weeks
706
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:23,880
because Sophie--
his daughter Sophie was born.
707
00:33:24,170 --> 00:33:25,250
His first kid.
708
00:33:25,670 --> 00:33:28,630
Prior to that, Gavin had gone to,
709
00:33:28,710 --> 00:33:30,420
I believe, it was like a...
710
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:32,500
{\an8}a David Duke conference.
711
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:35,420
{\an8}I just took it with a grain of salt
712
00:33:35,500 --> 00:33:37,500
{\an8}because that's how I took
everything Gavin said.
713
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:39,710
{\an8}So he goes to this David Duke thing,
714
00:33:39,790 --> 00:33:41,250
and they lose advertisers.
715
00:33:41,330 --> 00:33:43,830
So Shane says, "No bueno.
716
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,290
"Jesse's the editor now.
You're not."
717
00:33:47,380 --> 00:33:49,670
"Why are advertisers pulling?
This is what we do.”
718
00:33:49,750 --> 00:33:53,080
"Advertisers are pulling "because you're
associating yourself with David Duke,
719
00:33:53,170 --> 00:33:54,500
"and that's scary,
720
00:33:54,580 --> 00:33:59,420
"and so they don't want their product
to be advertised in the magazine.”
721
00:33:59,710 --> 00:34:02,710
"Okay, fuck you.
I'll show you what's scary.”
722
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:03,920
Right?
723
00:34:04,420 --> 00:34:06,630
So then Gavin comes back
from two weeks,
724
00:34:06,710 --> 00:34:09,540
and he's like, "Where the fuck is my desk?
Where's all my stuff?"
725
00:34:10,420 --> 00:34:12,000
None of his stuff was there.
726
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,290
He's asking everybody,
like, "Where's my chair?
727
00:34:14,380 --> 00:34:15,790
"Have you seen my chair, my desk?
728
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:17,080
"This isn't my computer.
729
00:34:17,170 --> 00:34:19,210
"What the fuck?"
730
00:34:19,290 --> 00:34:21,170
And everybody's quiet.
731
00:34:21,250 --> 00:34:23,130
"What the fuck is going on?
732
00:34:23,790 --> 00:34:25,080
"What the fuck?"
733
00:34:25,170 --> 00:34:27,420
And then Gavin just was like,
734
00:34:27,500 --> 00:34:29,920
"Fuck this fucking bullshit, whatever."
735
00:34:31,130 --> 00:34:33,540
Don't know the exact words.
Stormed out.
736
00:34:33,670 --> 00:34:35,540
I don't think he ever
went back to the office.
737
00:34:35,630 --> 00:34:36,920
It was a huge moment,
738
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,830
a huge, pivotal,
traumatic moment for his life.
739
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:44,540
His entire identity
was that magazine, right?
740
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:46,540
And he got booted out.
741
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:50,170
None of us are born knowing the answers.
742
00:34:50,250 --> 00:34:52,790
If people don't get to express themselves
743
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:55,290
and they don't get to learn
through some of these mistakes,
744
00:34:55,380 --> 00:34:58,080
then you're just bottled up,
and you're like,
745
00:34:58,170 --> 00:35:01,170
- "Okay, I'm gonna keep it to myself."
- Right, and then what happens?
746
00:35:01,250 --> 00:35:03,460
- You're gonna explode.
- You explode and you start...
747
00:35:04,580 --> 00:35:08,580
a group that is physically scary,
like the Proud Boys.
748
00:35:11,250 --> 00:35:12,460
{\an8}I went to America...
749
00:35:14,670 --> 00:35:15,880
{\an8}in the '90s.
750
00:35:17,580 --> 00:35:19,380
{\an8}Yeah. Boo!
751
00:35:20,710 --> 00:35:21,790
{\an8}Boo it up!
752
00:35:22,330 --> 00:35:25,420
Free speech is very dangerous...
753
00:35:25,830 --> 00:35:27,040
to the state.
754
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:30,080
The government doesn't like free speech,
755
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:34,040
and they've tricked us
into culturally thinking
756
00:35:34,130 --> 00:35:35,670
that we don't like free speech.
757
00:35:35,750 --> 00:35:37,130
We don't like telling stories.
758
00:35:37,210 --> 00:35:38,960
We're worried about offending people.
759
00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:40,380
But we're not.
760
00:35:43,290 --> 00:35:44,710
What happened to the West?
761
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:47,960
We're fighting to be ourselves.
762
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:51,210
We're fighting to be proud
and unashamed of who we are.
763
00:35:51,290 --> 00:35:52,460
And what are we?
764
00:35:52,540 --> 00:35:54,170
We're Westerners!
765
00:35:57,210 --> 00:36:00,830
If you want to come here
and you have those values, come on in.
766
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,670
But if you want to tell us what to do,
you can fuck off.
767
00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:11,500
I'm so nervous about meeting Eddie.
768
00:36:11,630 --> 00:36:13,630
Oh, my god.
Hope he likes me.
769
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:16,750
I don't know Chinese.
Does he speak English?
770
00:36:18,380 --> 00:36:19,920
'Cause we could use Google Translate.
771
00:36:20,540 --> 00:36:22,460
As I was getting ready
to enter the scene,
772
00:36:22,540 --> 00:36:25,330
I could hear Gavin telling
jokes about speaking Chinese.
773
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:28,170
We've met before.
Did you know we did comedy together?
774
00:36:28,250 --> 00:36:29,250
Where?
775
00:36:29,330 --> 00:36:30,790
At Brooklyn Brewery.
776
00:36:31,250 --> 00:36:33,540
- No way!
- Yeah. Everyone loved you,
777
00:36:33,630 --> 00:36:36,040
which I suspect is based on race.
778
00:36:36,170 --> 00:36:37,330
Yeah, probably.
779
00:36:37,420 --> 00:36:40,130
I felt like his strategy was
to try and shock me,
780
00:36:40,210 --> 00:36:42,080
like he shocks everyone else.
781
00:36:42,210 --> 00:36:45,000
But I didn't want to get
caught in his vortex arguing.
782
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:46,880
Oh, fuck, I got gum on my pants.
783
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,130
Do you-- you know how to
get gum off your pants?
784
00:36:51,330 --> 00:36:54,380
The positions he takes are so far
outside the realm of reason and logic
785
00:36:54,790 --> 00:36:57,210
that you lose as soon
as you meet him on that ground.
786
00:36:57,710 --> 00:37:00,170
- Do you want a drink?
- I'll have a drink. What d'you have?
787
00:37:00,250 --> 00:37:02,670
I'm having Coors Banquet
'cause of the Bud Light incident.
788
00:37:02,750 --> 00:37:04,500
I only wanted to know two things.
789
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:09,040
- We got Gatorade. We got Jameson.
- I will have the Malibu watermelon.
790
00:37:09,130 --> 00:37:11,580
One, is this truly who you are?
791
00:37:11,670 --> 00:37:13,330
- This is all fake.
- Oh, fuck.
792
00:37:13,420 --> 00:37:15,380
This is a fake bar you're in.
You're in a studio.
793
00:37:15,460 --> 00:37:17,880
- I'll come around and see what's real.
- These are all lies.
794
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:19,880
I'll have a fruit punch
Gatorade with Jameson.
795
00:37:20,330 --> 00:37:21,920
- Oh, that's a fun idea.
- Yeah.
796
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:23,000
And two,
797
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:26,920
how the fuck did you let Shane take over
the company that you gave your voice to?
798
00:37:30,790 --> 00:37:33,710
The story of VICE
is there's really two stories,
799
00:37:33,790 --> 00:37:35,920
and Shane is the backbone
of both of them.
800
00:37:36,380 --> 00:37:38,790
So the first story is my years at VICE,
801
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:41,580
and that was--
that culture was punk rock.
802
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,580
Like everyone's friends,
everyone hangs out, you know.
803
00:37:44,670 --> 00:37:46,880
Open floor plan, no offices.
804
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:48,960
Everyone can hear you on the phone.
805
00:37:49,420 --> 00:37:54,330
So Shane managed to take that esoteric,
hardcore DIY shit
806
00:37:54,420 --> 00:37:55,920
and make it profitable.
807
00:37:56,540 --> 00:37:58,540
Then when I left,
Shane's attitude was,
808
00:37:58,630 --> 00:37:59,830
"Where's the money?"
809
00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:01,790
And the money was with young girls.
810
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:03,250
"Alright, what are they into?
811
00:38:03,330 --> 00:38:04,460
"I don't care what it is.
812
00:38:04,540 --> 00:38:05,750
"If it's kiddie porn,
813
00:38:05,830 --> 00:38:07,630
"if it's snuff films, what are they into?
814
00:38:07,710 --> 00:38:10,750
"Oh, they're into woke shit.
Okay, let's do a bunch of woke shit."
815
00:38:11,170 --> 00:38:13,040
Yeah, I know you got an NDA,
but it's like,
816
00:38:13,130 --> 00:38:15,670
did you choose to leave,
or did you get forced out?
817
00:38:18,330 --> 00:38:21,330
I just became incompatible with the brand.
818
00:38:22,750 --> 00:38:26,130
Like, you know,
I had an ad agency after that,
819
00:38:26,210 --> 00:38:29,460
and it got shut down 'cause I said
trans people are mentally ill gays.
820
00:38:30,670 --> 00:38:32,420
I think too...
821
00:38:32,580 --> 00:38:37,670
the problem
with salesmen is it's not cool.
822
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,540
I think it is cool.
You make the world go round,
823
00:38:41,250 --> 00:38:44,290
but used-car salesmen ruined sales.
824
00:38:44,380 --> 00:38:45,920
And I think Shane hated being the like,
825
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,040
uncool guy for so long.
826
00:38:48,130 --> 00:38:50,500
Yeah, I wanted to ask you
a very real question,
827
00:38:50,580 --> 00:38:52,790
and it's like,
one of the main reasons I came,
828
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:54,540
'cause I watch all your shit,
829
00:38:54,630 --> 00:38:57,630
and I see everything you're doing,
and I know your old work at VICE.
830
00:38:58,170 --> 00:39:01,460
My feeling is
you really are being the person
831
00:39:01,540 --> 00:39:03,000
on some
Life of David Gale shit.
832
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:05,040
What's David Gale?
833
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:09,170
I'm a murderer four days shy
of his execution.
834
00:39:10,210 --> 00:39:11,420
The murder's way too clumsy.
835
00:39:12,130 --> 00:39:14,250
This guy is a major intellectual.
836
00:39:14,330 --> 00:39:15,880
Life of David Gale is this film
837
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:19,130
where Kevin Spacey is trying
to overturn capital punishment.
838
00:39:19,500 --> 00:39:23,540
So what he does is
him and his partner set up a murder,
839
00:39:23,630 --> 00:39:27,500
but she's killing herself,
and he sets himself up
840
00:39:27,580 --> 00:39:29,750
as the person that did the murder,
841
00:39:29,830 --> 00:39:31,750
and when he dies,
they release the video
842
00:39:31,830 --> 00:39:33,500
and realize they killed
an innocent man.
843
00:39:33,580 --> 00:39:37,670
So I'm playing a Hitler character
to expose racists?
844
00:39:38,580 --> 00:39:39,920
That's what I think.
845
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:42,420
- That's a terrible theory.
- That's what I think, Gavin.
846
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:44,670
But, if you really
believe this shit, then--
847
00:39:44,750 --> 00:39:46,040
Believe what shit, though?
848
00:39:46,170 --> 00:39:48,170
Like well I mean,
849
00:39:48,460 --> 00:39:49,880
like...
850
00:39:50,500 --> 00:39:51,790
all of it.
851
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:54,040
{\an8}If your boss grabs your ass
and it doesn't hurt
852
00:39:54,580 --> 00:39:56,210
{\an8}and you don't like it, quit.
853
00:39:56,290 --> 00:39:57,380
{\an8}- That's harassment.
- Yeah,
854
00:39:57,460 --> 00:39:59,000
{\an8}- that's harassment.
- Okay, then quit.
855
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:00,750
{\an8}I'm so glad you found it out on TV
856
00:40:00,830 --> 00:40:03,250
{\an8}that you can't grab somebody's ass.
857
00:40:03,330 --> 00:40:04,750
{\an8}I swear to God,
I did not know that.
858
00:40:04,830 --> 00:40:07,040
{\an8}Do you think
white supremacy exists in the US?
859
00:40:07,130 --> 00:40:08,580
Not to any measurable degree.
860
00:40:08,670 --> 00:40:13,330
{\an8}Women do earn less in America
because they choose to.
861
00:40:13,420 --> 00:40:16,750
{\an8}- They don't go the extra mile.
- Why am I sitting here? I'm sitting here.
862
00:40:16,830 --> 00:40:19,330
{\an8}You're making a mistake.
You would be much happier at home
863
00:40:19,420 --> 00:40:21,000
{\an8}- with a husband and children.
- Oh, boy.
864
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:22,630
You're not supposed to say it,
865
00:40:22,710 --> 00:40:24,580
but one of the biggest problems
with Jews is--
866
00:40:24,670 --> 00:40:26,630
Ow! Ow! What the...
867
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:30,920
I was gonna say the problem with Jews
is there's not enough of them.
868
00:40:34,290 --> 00:40:36,250
I've never met a bona fide racist.
869
00:40:36,630 --> 00:40:37,830
Like, it's not a thing.
870
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:39,960
Yet it's all the fucking...
871
00:40:40,170 --> 00:40:43,290
Joe Biden says white supremacy
is the number one threat
872
00:40:43,380 --> 00:40:44,750
to this country, and you're like,
873
00:40:44,830 --> 00:40:47,250
"Okay, can I meet one
of these fucking guys?"
874
00:40:47,630 --> 00:40:49,000
What is this issue?
875
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,330
Yo, I'm wondering if this--
876
00:40:51,420 --> 00:40:54,830
you're taking this position
and being this character.
877
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:56,750
What character?
Like, what position?
878
00:40:56,830 --> 00:40:59,080
I think women would be much happier
at home.
879
00:40:59,500 --> 00:41:03,960
Is that sexist? I can't tell you how many
women I know that fucking hate their jobs.
880
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:05,830
But there's a lot of men
that hate their jobs.
881
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:08,830
Generally men, when they talk about work,
they want to help the other guy.
882
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:11,460
Women aren't into solutions.
They just wanna bitch.
883
00:41:11,540 --> 00:41:13,000
When you give them a solution,
they're like,
884
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:14,210
"What the fuck
are you doing?
885
00:41:14,290 --> 00:41:15,880
"I'm going to continue bitching."
886
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:16,960
I have an idea.
887
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,210
I think we should arm wrestle
to see what the truth is.
888
00:41:19,290 --> 00:41:20,500
Okay, I'll arm wrestle you.
889
00:41:20,580 --> 00:41:22,040
Let's fucking arm wrestle.
890
00:41:22,420 --> 00:41:23,960
So, one, two, three.
891
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:25,290
- Yes.
- One, two, three.
892
00:41:28,460 --> 00:41:30,040
Women are happier at home.
893
00:41:30,210 --> 00:41:31,670
Amelia Earhart.
894
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:34,920
Feminism has ruined women.
895
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:38,750
Gloria Steinem was a shield for Shane.
896
00:41:39,500 --> 00:41:41,080
Gloria Steinem killed men's clubs.
897
00:41:41,170 --> 00:41:43,000
That's why Proud Boys did so well,
898
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:45,670
'cause men's clubs are supposed to exist.
899
00:41:45,750 --> 00:41:48,710
I'll never get to fuck my wife again
if I lose.
900
00:41:52,290 --> 00:41:54,170
This sucks.
This sucks.
901
00:42:01,500 --> 00:42:03,130
I guess women are great
in the workforce.
902
00:42:03,210 --> 00:42:06,380
- They're great in the workforce, man.
- I love them suing people.
903
00:42:06,460 --> 00:42:08,170
Their stupid HR jobs,
904
00:42:08,250 --> 00:42:10,210
controlling the company's social media.
905
00:42:11,130 --> 00:42:14,420
No, I really think everyone
should have the opportunity.
906
00:42:14,500 --> 00:42:16,790
No one's saying
they shouldn't have the opportunity,
907
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:18,630
but women tend to be happier at home.
908
00:42:18,710 --> 00:42:19,830
You don't want government,
909
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,250
you don't like law, but you love rules.
910
00:42:22,500 --> 00:42:24,830
- Like, do's and don'ts is rules.
- Yeah, but it's a joke.
911
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:26,750
I'm not trying to catch you, either.
I'm just--
912
00:42:26,830 --> 00:42:28,830
Right, but I can't--
I don't enforce these rules.
913
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:29,920
But I can have rules.
914
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:33,290
I do think there is a thing about you
that people are just scared of.
915
00:42:33,380 --> 00:42:35,250
What kind of pussy is scared of ideas?
916
00:42:35,330 --> 00:42:36,500
Like a Holocaust denier.
917
00:42:36,630 --> 00:42:39,040
That's a pretty horrible idea.
918
00:42:39,130 --> 00:42:41,250
Pedophilia, terrible idea.
919
00:42:41,330 --> 00:42:43,330
Say you think all Blacks
should go back to Africa.
920
00:42:43,420 --> 00:42:45,750
That's a dumb belief.
It doesn't scare me.
921
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:47,130
I want to argue with you.
922
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:50,380
- No?
- Yo, you are consistent.
923
00:42:50,460 --> 00:42:52,670
Well, I'm too lazy to lie, so.
924
00:42:53,710 --> 00:42:58,250
I just wish I could argue with people
about things I believe in, you know?
925
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:03,790
I think what I struggle with personally
926
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:07,830
when speaking to Gavin is the idea
that he could possibly believe this shit.
927
00:43:08,250 --> 00:43:10,750
What do you think is in the interest
of your country right now?
928
00:43:17,460 --> 00:43:19,330
{\an8}I've met white supremacists.
929
00:43:19,420 --> 00:43:22,210
{\an8}I specialize in talking
to these dumb fucks.
930
00:43:22,540 --> 00:43:25,420
{\an8}When I was interviewing
a white nationalist group, Forza Nuova,
931
00:43:25,500 --> 00:43:26,500
{\an8}on our Sicily episode,
932
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:28,830
{\an8}a passerby recognized them
933
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:31,420
{\an8}and challenged them about
their anti-immigration stance,
934
00:43:31,500 --> 00:43:32,500
{\an8}and they didn't like it.
935
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:43,330
{\an8}Within minutes,
they phoned plainclothes cops
936
00:43:43,420 --> 00:43:45,250
{\an8}to arrest us and take our footage.
937
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:50,170
Who cares?
We didn't do anything wrong.
938
00:43:50,250 --> 00:43:51,710
Why'd they say
they're taking you in?
939
00:43:51,790 --> 00:43:55,040
- I fought them on giving my ID card.
- Let's go, guys. Let's go, guys.
940
00:43:55,170 --> 00:43:57,170
Bye-bye. Let's go.
941
00:43:57,830 --> 00:44:00,500
I believe that those people believe
the shit they're saying.
942
00:44:01,420 --> 00:44:04,960
But there's something about Gavin
that makes me feel he knows better.
943
00:44:05,330 --> 00:44:07,130
He knows his opinions are horseshit.
944
00:44:07,580 --> 00:44:10,540
I think he's less a white supremacist
and more of a nihilist,
945
00:44:10,630 --> 00:44:14,380
cashing in on this ridiculous caricature
he's turned himself into.
946
00:44:14,580 --> 00:44:19,250
And I feel this way because VICE was full
of people like this guy.
947
00:44:19,330 --> 00:44:22,500
{\an8}They get off on having these
ideas and being edgelords
948
00:44:22,580 --> 00:44:24,960
{\an8}because making people
feel uncomfortable
949
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,500
{\an8}makes them feel powerful.
950
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:30,080
It's all a punk rock fake-out.
951
00:44:30,670 --> 00:44:34,420
Gavin is still out here making money,
feeding his family,
952
00:44:34,500 --> 00:44:36,210
telling incendiary jokes
953
00:44:36,290 --> 00:44:38,500
because there's a large swath
of this nation
954
00:44:38,580 --> 00:44:40,460
that takes it as the truth.
955
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:42,540
This guy's not crazy.
956
00:44:42,670 --> 00:44:44,920
He's accidentally representative.
957
00:44:45,500 --> 00:44:49,790
But how the fuck did Shane
take this man's voice and magazine
958
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,460
and sell it
to people like Disney?
959
00:45:11,330 --> 00:45:14,130
I like being a dad so far,
like three months.
960
00:45:14,210 --> 00:45:15,460
I've been enjoying it.
961
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:17,210
It's been cool.
962
00:45:17,290 --> 00:45:19,460
Damn, three months.
You're new. You're fresh in it.
963
00:45:19,670 --> 00:45:22,880
- Hi, guys.
- Thank you for having us here today.
964
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:24,420
I'm happy to meet you guys.
965
00:45:24,500 --> 00:45:28,000
Yeah. So I figured you could read
my friend Dave's palm first.
966
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:29,630
- Oh, no.
- Can I see your palms?
967
00:45:29,710 --> 00:45:32,420
- Yeah.
- Okay, close your eyes.
968
00:45:32,500 --> 00:45:36,380
Well, I do feel that you have
a lot of deja vu, a lot of wisdom.
969
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:38,920
Do you write a lot?
970
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:40,130
Well, yeah.
971
00:45:40,210 --> 00:45:41,920
I used to write
for a magazine called VICE.
972
00:45:42,500 --> 00:45:44,130
And I think
those early issues of VICE,
973
00:45:44,210 --> 00:45:46,130
there was an issue
where I painted the cover,
974
00:45:46,210 --> 00:45:48,580
and I wrote like three articles
in it under different names,
975
00:45:48,670 --> 00:45:50,420
I did the comic strip in the back.
976
00:45:50,500 --> 00:45:53,250
You know, basically whatever I want.
I could do a goofy hitchhiking show
977
00:45:53,330 --> 00:45:54,460
and serious news.
978
00:45:54,540 --> 00:45:56,000
What I loved
about your show though,
979
00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:58,710
like, besides the camera work
which was phenomenal,
980
00:45:58,790 --> 00:46:00,000
was it was honest.
981
00:46:00,130 --> 00:46:01,130
You know what I mean?
982
00:46:01,210 --> 00:46:03,460
You straight up went
to go find a dinosaur
983
00:46:03,540 --> 00:46:05,380
and you were like,
"I can't fucking find it."
984
00:46:11,210 --> 00:46:13,170
We just said
we wanted to see the dinosaur
985
00:46:13,250 --> 00:46:15,500
and they kept saying,
"Do you want to see the dinosaur?
986
00:46:15,580 --> 00:46:16,880
"Do you wanna see
this dinosaur?"
987
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:18,460
"Yes, we want to see the dinosaur."
988
00:46:18,540 --> 00:46:21,080
So we had to do this ritual.
989
00:46:21,460 --> 00:46:23,960
So they pour us this clear liquid.
990
00:46:27,500 --> 00:46:29,040
I don't know what was in that stuff.
991
00:46:29,130 --> 00:46:31,130
And then like some kind of dream
or something,
992
00:46:31,210 --> 00:46:33,750
this thing just came out
and the people just screamed
993
00:46:33,830 --> 00:46:36,580
and they were either
saying he's an evil spirit
994
00:46:36,670 --> 00:46:38,000
or it's the dinosaur.
995
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:40,210
And I'm like,
"Oh, I guess that's the dinosaur."
996
00:46:40,290 --> 00:46:42,210
And as fucked up as I was you know
997
00:46:42,290 --> 00:46:44,000
I was believing it at the time.
998
00:46:44,710 --> 00:46:46,380
But I'm going to say you had a void.
999
00:46:46,790 --> 00:46:49,750
There was a void energy,
like just a numb energy.
1000
00:46:50,630 --> 00:46:53,130
I can feel it,
but you tell me what it was.
1001
00:46:53,210 --> 00:46:54,210
Yeah, it was--
1002
00:46:54,290 --> 00:46:56,880
Can you tell if he's still cancelled
by looking at his hand?
1003
00:46:59,420 --> 00:47:01,960
Well, I still feel
you have a lot to achieve
1004
00:47:02,580 --> 00:47:04,420
because you're very honest,
you're very pure,
1005
00:47:04,500 --> 00:47:06,130
and that's why people saw that.
1006
00:47:07,330 --> 00:47:09,420
You weren't there
when it turned to shit.
1007
00:47:10,250 --> 00:47:11,750
But you still told me not to go.
1008
00:47:11,830 --> 00:47:13,880
Yeah, 'cause I was like,
"You will get fucked over."
1009
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,630
I just thought that because,
like, I had an attorney,
1010
00:47:16,710 --> 00:47:18,750
we had a contract,
they're going to owe me money
1011
00:47:18,830 --> 00:47:20,920
- ...because legally in America--
- They do.
1012
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:22,210
they owe me money.
1013
00:47:22,290 --> 00:47:23,830
You knew you weren't getting
that money.
1014
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:26,580
No, I genuinely did.
That's where I'm stupid.
1015
00:47:26,670 --> 00:47:27,670
No, you're not stupid.
1016
00:47:27,750 --> 00:47:30,380
I think he really did believe.
He really did trust them.
1017
00:47:31,170 --> 00:47:33,500
I saw Shane fuck a lot of people over.
1018
00:47:33,670 --> 00:47:35,290
- Yeah.
- And like, I didn't like it.
1019
00:47:35,380 --> 00:47:37,210
And I did speak up for them.
1020
00:47:37,290 --> 00:47:40,750
You know, at VICE they would give
everybody these rings that said VICE.
1021
00:47:40,830 --> 00:47:42,920
- Really?
- And they gave me a gold one,
1022
00:47:43,000 --> 00:47:46,210
but they didn't give anybody else
on my crew the VICE ring.
1023
00:47:46,420 --> 00:47:49,630
So I went and I made 'Rice' rings
for everybody on my crew,
1024
00:47:49,710 --> 00:47:51,500
and I paid for it
because I was just like,
1025
00:47:51,580 --> 00:47:53,830
"Yo, all for one or like none for all."
1026
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:55,670
- You know, like Goonies.
- Right.
1027
00:47:56,670 --> 00:47:58,960
I don't know if you wanna use any
of this for the documentary,
1028
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:01,330
but like how long do you want
to feel that for?
1029
00:48:01,420 --> 00:48:03,420
- Didn't you just have a baby?
- Yeah, I did.
1030
00:48:03,500 --> 00:48:05,380
- Yeah, you just had a baby.
- Three months old.
1031
00:48:05,460 --> 00:48:06,500
Yeah,
three-month-old baby.
1032
00:48:06,580 --> 00:48:08,670
What a great time
to make a documentary about VICE.
1033
00:48:08,750 --> 00:48:10,250
- You got your baby.
- Go fucking home
1034
00:48:10,330 --> 00:48:11,580
and be with your kid, dude.
1035
00:48:11,670 --> 00:48:13,420
This is a weird Chink right here.
1036
00:48:13,500 --> 00:48:14,880
Well, you guys have a connection.
1037
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:16,500
You know that.
1038
00:48:16,580 --> 00:48:17,580
Oh yeah?
1039
00:48:17,670 --> 00:48:20,330
I mean, he's pretty psychic.
He told me not to go to VICE.
1040
00:48:20,580 --> 00:48:23,540
When I met you, you had just written
Fresh Off the Boat.
1041
00:48:23,630 --> 00:48:26,330
And you were like a, you know,
it became a huge TV show.
1042
00:48:26,420 --> 00:48:27,790
ABC bought it.
1043
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:31,460
But I told you from the beginning,
I was like,
1044
00:48:31,540 --> 00:48:34,670
"It's ABC, corporate America,
white television.
1045
00:48:34,750 --> 00:48:36,670
"You think they're gonna
make your book the way--"
1046
00:48:36,750 --> 00:48:38,250
It wasn't exactly how
you wrote it, right?
1047
00:48:38,330 --> 00:48:40,630
Yeah, and he got angry,
and I was like...
1048
00:48:40,710 --> 00:48:42,540
I always thought I could persevere.
1049
00:48:42,630 --> 00:48:44,580
I thought I could be like the change.
1050
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:48,710
And so how long do you want to keep
repeating that and feeling that feeling?
1051
00:48:48,790 --> 00:48:50,580
What is it that you want to manifest?
1052
00:48:50,670 --> 00:48:51,790
No, my thing is this.
1053
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:54,540
I don't think it's about revenge.
1054
00:48:54,630 --> 00:48:56,080
It's justice.
1055
00:48:56,170 --> 00:48:58,040
Other people got fucked
over more than me.
1056
00:48:58,130 --> 00:49:00,330
And I was like,
"Somebody got to say something."
1057
00:49:00,420 --> 00:49:02,420
- I believe--
- But why does it have to be you?
1058
00:49:04,460 --> 00:49:06,250
Choe fucking pisses me off
1059
00:49:06,330 --> 00:49:09,040
because it's easy for him
to say, "Let it go."
1060
00:49:09,130 --> 00:49:11,130
Homie's got Facebook money.
1061
00:49:11,790 --> 00:49:15,000
But I also don't fault Choe
because he doesn't know that I'm broke.
1062
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:18,920
VICE owes me hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
1063
00:49:19,210 --> 00:49:21,460
My son was born three months ago.
1064
00:49:21,580 --> 00:49:23,830
There's a triple strike going on in LA
1065
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:26,420
and I overdrafted
my bank account this month.
1066
00:49:26,630 --> 00:49:29,830
So yeah, I'm having a lot
of trouble letting this go.
1067
00:49:31,500 --> 00:49:33,330
And sometimes I wonder,
1068
00:49:33,420 --> 00:49:36,630
would life have been better as
the Asian hip-hop Guy Fieri?
1069
00:49:48,330 --> 00:49:49,580
Hey, I'm Guy Fieri,
1070
00:49:49,670 --> 00:49:52,500
and haven't been
to a new restaurant in 37 seasons.
1071
00:49:52,670 --> 00:49:56,080
But when I heard about
Thai Taco Tuesdays at Anajak Thai,
1072
00:49:56,250 --> 00:49:58,380
I just had to come
to Sherman Oaks and check out
1073
00:49:58,460 --> 00:50:00,420
what Chef Justin Pichetrungsi's doing.
1074
00:50:00,500 --> 00:50:01,630
Come on in!
1075
00:50:02,630 --> 00:50:04,250
It's not fucking open!
1076
00:50:09,250 --> 00:50:10,580
Hell yeah, brother.
1077
00:50:10,670 --> 00:50:12,380
I'm with VICE legend Santiago Stelley.
1078
00:50:12,460 --> 00:50:14,710
- How you doing, Santi?
- I'm good, buddy. How you doing?
1079
00:50:14,790 --> 00:50:16,580
Hell yeah, thanks for being
on Triple D, man.
1080
00:50:16,670 --> 00:50:19,040
Weren't you working
on some magazine called Colors before?
1081
00:50:19,130 --> 00:50:21,960
Yeah, so I worked for years
at Colors Magazine.
1082
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:23,880
My first contact ever with VICE
1083
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:28,000
was because they had taken
a page out of Colors magazine,
1084
00:50:28,130 --> 00:50:31,670
literally just ripped it
and published it in VICE
1085
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:35,580
as some sort of an advert
for a shoe company or something.
1086
00:50:35,670 --> 00:50:37,880
Hell no, brother.
I wouldn't even do shit like that.
1087
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:40,250
I haven't shown up on my show
for fucking 10 seasons,
1088
00:50:40,330 --> 00:50:42,420
but you know not to take
a frame from another show
1089
00:50:42,500 --> 00:50:43,580
and put it in your show.
1090
00:50:43,670 --> 00:50:47,330
Right? So, VICE was just
starting to do video,
1091
00:50:47,420 --> 00:50:49,420
and after meeting them,
they asked me if I'd go
1092
00:50:49,500 --> 00:50:52,830
to Bolivia to shoot
a documentary the next day.
1093
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:55,500
Hell yeah, Bolivia, baby.
1094
00:50:55,580 --> 00:50:56,580
Fucking A.
1095
00:50:56,670 --> 00:51:01,460
And ended up going to shoot
VICE Guide to Travel in 2006.
1096
00:51:01,540 --> 00:51:03,710
What are some of your favorite pieces
from that era?
1097
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:07,290
I went to Colombia with Thomas Morton
1098
00:51:07,380 --> 00:51:09,330
and with Ryan Duffy,
and in that shoot,
1099
00:51:09,420 --> 00:51:11,130
I think we were there for about two weeks.
1100
00:51:11,210 --> 00:51:13,290
We shot "Columbian's Devil's Breath,"
1101
00:51:13,380 --> 00:51:15,080
which is the world's deadliest drug,
1102
00:51:15,170 --> 00:51:17,000
on YouTube nowadays,
1103
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,830
"The Sewers of Bogota,"
"Bulletproof Tailor,"
1104
00:51:20,790 --> 00:51:22,540
"The Donkey Fucking Piece."
1105
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:29,630
It was just kind of all on the fly.
1106
00:51:29,750 --> 00:51:31,750
And when you do things on the fly,
I mean...
1107
00:51:32,460 --> 00:51:34,330
it just has a different energy,
you know?
1108
00:51:36,170 --> 00:51:38,420
{\an8}If you see
the "Columbian's Devil's Breath" piece,
1109
00:51:38,500 --> 00:51:41,920
{\an8}there's a junkie who helps us
to go buy what we need.
1110
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:44,670
We landed at Bogota,
and 20 minutes after that,
1111
00:51:44,750 --> 00:51:46,000
we were shooting
with this guy.
1112
00:51:46,670 --> 00:51:48,880
{\an8}And Ryan kind of built
the whole doc around it.
1113
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:52,250
{\an8}Those kind of moments,
that kind of spontaneity,
1114
00:51:52,330 --> 00:51:54,750
{\an8}we kind of went into every shoot
1115
00:51:54,830 --> 00:51:56,670
{\an8}with that mentality.
1116
00:51:56,750 --> 00:51:59,790
{\an8}It's hard because that's not
how content is produced, right?
1117
00:51:59,880 --> 00:52:03,630
It's not okay
by the industry standards or whatever.
1118
00:52:03,710 --> 00:52:05,540
You gotta help me
get something straight here.
1119
00:52:05,630 --> 00:52:11,210
Everybody always says,
"Spike Jonze, creative director of VBS,"
1120
00:52:11,290 --> 00:52:12,790
but you're the creative director.
1121
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:14,880
Can you have two creative directors?
1122
00:52:15,040 --> 00:52:18,920
Well, I mean, the whole Spike thing
was used for years.
1123
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:20,460
We talked and--
you know, that was--
1124
00:52:20,540 --> 00:52:26,330
that was the sales department
or marketing kind of... tool.
1125
00:52:29,460 --> 00:52:31,960
I feel excited
and anxious that, you know,
1126
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:34,790
just to make sure we actually
seize the opportunity as well as we can.
1127
00:52:35,540 --> 00:52:36,960
I think we're just
at the beginning.
1128
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:40,040
I feel like we've just built the
foundation of what it can be.
1129
00:52:40,380 --> 00:52:42,380
It's like Viceland 1.0 right now.
1130
00:52:43,830 --> 00:52:46,830
When we were doing VBS
for the first five, six, seven years,
1131
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:49,290
you know, I never had
any interaction with Spike.
1132
00:52:49,380 --> 00:52:50,380
Neither did anybody else.
1133
00:52:50,460 --> 00:52:54,040
But for the most part,
those formats that went on Viceland,
1134
00:52:54,130 --> 00:52:56,000
as little as I followed it,
1135
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:58,750
were formats that had
been created on VBS, right?
1136
00:52:58,830 --> 00:53:02,790
They weren't even
VICE dot-com period formats.
1137
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:05,170
And those formats, now
they seem like obvious things,
1138
00:53:05,290 --> 00:53:08,460
but they weren't at the time.
Nobody was doing any of this stuff.
1139
00:53:08,540 --> 00:53:10,540
As a guy stuck in a scripts format,
1140
00:53:10,630 --> 00:53:13,420
I was always very jealous about the stuff
you guys were doing
1141
00:53:13,500 --> 00:53:14,630
'cause you're breaking form
1142
00:53:14,710 --> 00:53:16,880
- ...and, you know, subverting things,
- Yeah.
1143
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:19,210
and when I have to do my show
talking like this,
1144
00:53:19,290 --> 00:53:20,630
it hurts my throat, man.
1145
00:53:20,710 --> 00:53:25,130
Fuck. Gotta drink so much water
on Triple D just to keep this voice up.
1146
00:53:25,630 --> 00:53:27,460
Alright, guys.
1147
00:53:28,290 --> 00:53:31,710
So we got noodle supreme with shrimp.
1148
00:53:32,460 --> 00:53:36,130
Pad pong karee.
It's like a Chinese-Thai seafood dish.
1149
00:53:36,210 --> 00:53:39,000
And then we got, you know, Dad's ribs.
1150
00:53:39,080 --> 00:53:40,250
Oh, hell yeah.
1151
00:53:40,330 --> 00:53:42,080
- So enjoy.
- Thank you. Appreciate it.
1152
00:53:42,170 --> 00:53:44,170
- Thank you.
- Yeah, dig in.
1153
00:53:45,290 --> 00:53:48,290
I think at this point
I can cease being Guy Fieri.
1154
00:53:48,500 --> 00:53:49,710
- No.
- There you go.
1155
00:53:49,920 --> 00:53:51,460
The food...
1156
00:53:52,290 --> 00:53:55,540
Oh, man.
Bro, it is so hard to be Guy Fieri.
1157
00:53:55,630 --> 00:53:56,750
It's not even funny.
1158
00:53:56,830 --> 00:53:58,500
I have so much more respect
for that guy
1159
00:53:58,580 --> 00:54:00,790
after being Guy Fieri
for like three hours.
1160
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:02,790
But the shit that you and Jesse did,
1161
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:04,000
when you were doing it,
1162
00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:06,380
what credit did you get on each piece?
1163
00:54:06,460 --> 00:54:08,250
- There were no directors.
- Yeah.
1164
00:54:08,330 --> 00:54:11,580
But then when you're the guy who went
and spent a month in prison in Colombia,
1165
00:54:11,670 --> 00:54:15,830
which is... you know,
stressful, interesting situation.
1166
00:54:15,920 --> 00:54:17,540
Happy I had that opportunity,
1167
00:54:17,630 --> 00:54:20,040
but it's a stressful situation to be in.
1168
00:54:20,130 --> 00:54:22,420
And then you're not really
getting credited for it, right?
1169
00:54:22,500 --> 00:54:24,920
The show doesn't jump out
of a bush into the camera.
1170
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,670
- That's right.
- It's directed, captured, hosted,
1171
00:54:27,750 --> 00:54:28,920
it's lived.
1172
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:31,170
And at VICE, the funny thing is,
1173
00:54:31,250 --> 00:54:33,040
no one got a director's credit,
1174
00:54:33,130 --> 00:54:35,290
but Shane and Eddie's names
1175
00:54:35,380 --> 00:54:38,210
are on every single piece
of content at VICE.
1176
00:54:38,290 --> 00:54:41,670
I personally feel that they
didn't give director credits
1177
00:54:41,750 --> 00:54:43,670
because they didn't
want people to come up.
1178
00:54:44,250 --> 00:54:48,670
Not having the director credit really hurt
a lot of young directors at VICE.
1179
00:54:49,460 --> 00:54:51,210
For production out in the field,
1180
00:54:51,290 --> 00:54:54,210
we were always trying
to send an expert, right?
1181
00:54:54,380 --> 00:54:57,170
Not somebody who's like,
camera-ready but just like,
1182
00:54:57,250 --> 00:54:59,960
somebody who has deep knowledge
on a subject matter.
1183
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:01,710
For the most part,
people were journalists
1184
00:55:01,790 --> 00:55:04,670
or had some sort of journalistic,
journalism background.
1185
00:55:05,130 --> 00:55:08,380
But in post-production,
all of our editors came from film school.
1186
00:55:08,460 --> 00:55:12,000
And so for a long time,
a lot of the directors were the editors,
1187
00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:14,130
because they were
these kind of film school kids
1188
00:55:14,210 --> 00:55:15,540
who knew how to tell a story,
1189
00:55:15,630 --> 00:55:18,210
and they were the ones
just figuring out a pile of tapes.
1190
00:55:18,290 --> 00:55:19,960
What do we do with this, you know?
1191
00:55:20,250 --> 00:55:23,210
And then Shane just kind of sits
in front of this bear
1192
00:55:23,290 --> 00:55:26,380
and regales stories of,
like, his adventures,
1193
00:55:26,460 --> 00:55:29,710
and the assumption is always there that
he's the guy who went and shot this story.
1194
00:55:29,790 --> 00:55:31,920
- Because Shane is a sales guy.
- Yeah.
1195
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:33,580
He wasn't a creative guy.
1196
00:55:33,670 --> 00:55:36,580
But Shane was somebody who you really just
had to give him a little script
1197
00:55:36,670 --> 00:55:38,130
or here's your stand-up,
you know,
1198
00:55:38,210 --> 00:55:39,960
and just bare minimum, man.
1199
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:43,750
I mean, we shot a ton of interviews
where he just didn't show up.
1200
00:55:43,830 --> 00:55:46,920
Not because-- I mean, he made it
all the way to Guadalajara, Mexico,
1201
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:49,830
but then he stayed in the hotel
the day of the shoot.
1202
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:53,170
And then after the shoot,
he inserts himself in post-production.
1203
00:55:53,250 --> 00:55:56,830
And stylistically,
that's off from what we do.
1204
00:55:56,920 --> 00:55:58,210
It's disrespectful.
1205
00:55:58,290 --> 00:56:00,250
Yeah, it was just
very performative, right?
1206
00:56:00,330 --> 00:56:02,830
It was like he would do
these kind of stand-ups.
1207
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:05,750
He'd wait for the cop car sirens
to be flashing by,
1208
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:09,630
and then he'd do his, you know,
urgent-sounding stand-up, right?
1209
00:56:09,710 --> 00:56:12,920
I went through that process once with him
and just thought, “Man, I can't.
1210
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,000
"Like, this, like,
I'm gonna kill somebody.”
1211
00:56:15,080 --> 00:56:17,000
And I think he probably felt the same way,
1212
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:18,790
and we never did a production again.
1213
00:56:18,880 --> 00:56:20,920
It's a totally different
type of production.
1214
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:23,330
- Yeah, the Shane production.
- It's a totally different--
1215
00:56:23,420 --> 00:56:25,330
- Yeah, it's "Weekend at Bernie's."
- Yeah.
1216
00:56:25,420 --> 00:56:26,420
Yeah.
1217
00:56:27,380 --> 00:56:31,580
How did the VICE on HBO show
come out of your guys' work?
1218
00:56:31,670 --> 00:56:33,290
So I'm not credited on the HBO show
1219
00:56:33,380 --> 00:56:35,580
because I left once we'd finished it,
1220
00:56:35,670 --> 00:56:37,630
but my credit was removed.
1221
00:56:38,330 --> 00:56:40,750
But that was built off of our story bible.
1222
00:56:40,830 --> 00:56:43,500
I mean, we kept a story bible
in the content department,
1223
00:56:43,580 --> 00:56:47,630
and you know, there were stories that
we looked at for years to make, right?
1224
00:56:47,710 --> 00:56:50,670
And eventually when first the
"VICE Guide to Everything"
1225
00:56:50,750 --> 00:56:52,790
came around or the HBO show
came around,
1226
00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:55,170
we just opened up that VICE story bible.
1227
00:56:55,250 --> 00:56:56,960
And then repurposed them.
1228
00:56:57,040 --> 00:56:58,460
I mean, a lot of things
were reshot.
1229
00:56:58,540 --> 00:57:01,960
But when it was republished, the credits
at the end were taken off of everything,
1230
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:03,920
and mostly it was interns.
1231
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:06,330
They'd have them set
up every one of these pieces.
1232
00:57:06,420 --> 00:57:09,210
It literally had been done
five, six years prior.
1233
00:57:09,630 --> 00:57:12,170
I'm Chantal from
the VICE office in Brooklyn.
1234
00:57:12,250 --> 00:57:14,040
I'm Katie from
the VICE office in Brooklyn.
1235
00:57:14,130 --> 00:57:16,290
I'm Chelsea from
the VICE office in Brooklyn.
1236
00:57:16,380 --> 00:57:18,000
- Brooklyn.
- Brooklyn, New York.
1237
00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:20,710
Our colleagues in China spent some time
with Enbo Fight Club.
1238
00:57:20,790 --> 00:57:24,170
Our colleagues over at VICE Colombia
explored the Indigenous queer community
1239
00:57:24,250 --> 00:57:25,790
at an Amazonian beauty pageant.
1240
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:28,040
This is VICE China's
Out of Place: Part One.
1241
00:57:28,130 --> 00:57:29,790
This is Indonesian Death Cult.
1242
00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:31,670
This is Templo de Lucifer.
1243
00:57:31,750 --> 00:57:33,290
- Stay tuned.
- Stay tuned.
1244
00:57:33,380 --> 00:57:34,580
Stay tuned.
1245
00:57:34,670 --> 00:57:36,580
Which, in fact,
I mean, was a part of why I left.
1246
00:57:36,670 --> 00:57:38,540
I mean, I had spent years
1247
00:57:38,630 --> 00:57:40,710
kind of not being credited for my stuff,
1248
00:57:40,790 --> 00:57:43,080
not being reimbursed for my stuff.
1249
00:57:43,210 --> 00:57:45,540
And on top of it, like, you know,
1250
00:57:45,630 --> 00:57:48,290
I was told for a whole long time
1251
00:57:48,380 --> 00:57:52,170
that they were gonna stop with
this Spike Jonze kind of pitch, you know,
1252
00:57:52,250 --> 00:57:54,920
and that they'd give credit
where credit was due, and they did not.
1253
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:56,920
I mean, there was none of that
at any point.
1254
00:57:57,000 --> 00:57:58,790
So at some point,
you're like, "You know what?
1255
00:57:58,880 --> 00:58:00,380
I'm out of here.
What's the purpose?"
1256
00:58:01,420 --> 00:58:04,170
Hearing Santiago talk
about the Shane production
1257
00:58:04,250 --> 00:58:07,460
reminded me of this infamous
David Carr piece on VICE.
1258
00:58:09,830 --> 00:58:11,880
It was the first time
I ever heard someone call out
1259
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:15,630
VICE's bullshit style
of quote-unquote "journalism".
1260
00:58:19,460 --> 00:58:21,790
If you're a CNN viewer and you go,
1261
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:26,130
"Hm, I'm looking at human shit
on the beach."
1262
00:58:26,830 --> 00:58:28,830
I'm going to tell you one thing.
I'm a regular guy.
1263
00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:33,130
And I go to these places and I go, okay,
everyone talked to me about cannibalism.
1264
00:58:33,210 --> 00:58:35,040
Right? Everyone talked to me
about cannibalism.
1265
00:58:35,130 --> 00:58:38,040
Now I'm getting a lot of shit for saying
what cannibalism stuff, whatever.
1266
00:58:38,580 --> 00:58:40,170
Everyone talked to me about cannibalism!
1267
00:58:40,250 --> 00:58:43,130
Yeah, most of my boys,
they would drain the blood
1268
00:58:43,210 --> 00:58:45,580
from an innocent child
and drink it before going to battle.
1269
00:58:45,670 --> 00:58:47,630
- So you kill the child?
- Yes.
1270
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:49,540
- And then you drink the blood?
- Yeah.
1271
00:58:49,630 --> 00:58:52,250
I lifted it up to the temple.
I'm gonna eat it.
1272
00:58:52,330 --> 00:58:53,330
That's fucking crazy.
1273
00:58:53,420 --> 00:58:57,630
So our audience goes,
"That's fucking insane, that's nuts."
1274
00:58:57,710 --> 00:59:00,460
And New York Times
meanwhile is writing about surfing.
1275
00:59:00,790 --> 00:59:02,880
And I'm sitting there going,
you know what,
1276
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:05,630
I'm not gonna talk about surfing.
I'm gonna talk about cannibalism.
1277
00:59:05,710 --> 00:59:08,670
- 'Cause that fucks me up.
- Just a sec, time out.
1278
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:10,920
Before you ever went there,
1279
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:13,210
we've had reporters there
1280
00:59:13,290 --> 00:59:15,750
reporting on genocide after genocide.
1281
00:59:15,830 --> 00:59:20,580
Just 'cause you put on a fucking safari
helmet and went and looked at some poop,
1282
00:59:20,670 --> 00:59:22,790
doesn't give you the right
to insult what we do.
1283
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:25,290
So continue, continue.
1284
00:59:25,380 --> 00:59:28,580
I'm just saying that I'm not a journalist.
I'm not there to report.
1285
00:59:28,670 --> 00:59:29,790
Obviously.
1286
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:32,500
This interview really changed
the culture at VICE.
1287
00:59:32,580 --> 00:59:34,830
It went all around the office,
and for the first time,
1288
00:59:34,920 --> 00:59:37,380
we'd seen our bosses
get spanked in public.
1289
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:40,290
The immediate reaction
from the top down
1290
00:59:40,630 --> 00:59:44,330
was that we needed the respect
of real journalists like David Carr.
1291
00:59:44,750 --> 00:59:46,630
In retrospect,
it was the right instinct
1292
00:59:46,710 --> 00:59:49,670
to consider accountability as journalists.
1293
00:59:49,790 --> 00:59:52,540
And this kicked off perhaps
the most productive era
1294
00:59:52,630 --> 00:59:55,210
at VICE since Gavin left.
1295
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:00,420
{\an8}Hi, I'm Shane Smith.
We're here in the offices of VICE.
1296
01:00:00,500 --> 01:00:01,750
We shoot a lot of stuff here.
1297
01:00:01,830 --> 01:00:03,830
These are all the magazine covers
over the years.
1298
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:05,380
We've been doing this a long time.
1299
01:00:05,460 --> 01:00:08,290
We started out as a magazine,
then we went into online video.
1300
01:00:08,380 --> 01:00:10,000
Most recently,
our YouTube channels
1301
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:13,000
like VICE, Creators Project,
Motherboard, Noisey.
1302
01:00:13,080 --> 01:00:14,830
But what I want to show you today
1303
01:00:14,920 --> 01:00:17,080
is something brand new
and really exciting.
1304
01:00:17,170 --> 01:00:19,380
We're gonna go check it out.
Come with me.
1305
01:00:20,580 --> 01:00:24,210
After the rise of VBS and verticals
like Munchies and Noisey,
1306
01:00:24,750 --> 01:00:27,380
Shane's next trip was VICE on HBO.
1307
01:00:27,630 --> 01:00:30,210
And with the Dennis Rodman
North Korea episode,
1308
01:00:30,290 --> 01:00:32,920
VICE's power was undeniable.
1309
01:00:36,960 --> 01:00:39,920
Shane had combined
hard-hitting, frontline news
1310
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:43,380
with insane access
and entertainment value.
1311
01:00:48,750 --> 01:00:52,000
While they preserved the integrity
of the VICE on HBO show,
1312
01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:56,040
Shane spun a multitude of businesses
off the reputation of that show,
1313
01:00:56,130 --> 01:00:58,460
and every investor wanted a piece.
1314
01:01:02,580 --> 01:01:06,210
One of the most
successful ventures was VICE News.
1315
01:01:06,790 --> 01:01:10,080
And its most decorated
journalist was Simon Ostrovsky.
1316
01:01:10,500 --> 01:01:11,830
- Simon, hi.
- Yeah, hi.
1317
01:01:12,330 --> 01:01:14,330
My name is Shane.
I'm from America.
1318
01:01:14,420 --> 01:01:17,290
We're here with our friend Simon.
We've been on a train for a long time.
1319
01:01:17,830 --> 01:01:19,040
We're going a bit goofy.
1320
01:01:19,130 --> 01:01:22,250
At the VICE office,
they had a screen at the entry
1321
01:01:22,330 --> 01:01:25,880
where you would see
a part of this story on loop
1322
01:01:25,960 --> 01:01:28,330
where I'm riding the train with Shane.
1323
01:01:31,500 --> 01:01:35,500
The interim between
sort of mildly friendly drunk
1324
01:01:35,580 --> 01:01:38,040
and psychopathically
pull-your-eyeball-out drunk,
1325
01:01:38,130 --> 01:01:39,540
there's this sort of level of like,
1326
01:01:39,630 --> 01:01:41,420
"I hate your fucking guts.
No, you're okay.
1327
01:01:41,500 --> 01:01:43,670
"We're buddies, we're buddies.
I want to kill you."
1328
01:01:43,750 --> 01:01:47,580
So you've got to stay
somewhere in this gauge.
1329
01:01:48,330 --> 01:01:50,290
I remember seeing this clip.
1330
01:01:50,380 --> 01:01:53,790
We were like, "Oh, shit, this is Shane's,
like, serious news friend."
1331
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:55,130
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1332
01:01:55,210 --> 01:01:57,920
So everybody at VICE thought
me and Shane were super tight,
1333
01:01:58,000 --> 01:01:59,960
- Yeah.
- ...which was not the case.
1334
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:02,040
How did you meet Shane and come to VICE?
1335
01:02:02,130 --> 01:02:05,170
Shane saw something
that I put out on the BBC,
1336
01:02:05,250 --> 01:02:10,170
which was an investigation into the use of
North Korean labor in Russia.
1337
01:02:10,880 --> 01:02:13,420
{\an8}We headed further along
the road into the forest,
1338
01:02:13,500 --> 01:02:15,830
{\an8}and before long,
we began to see signs
1339
01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:17,880
{\an8}of woodcutting activity
in the area.
1340
01:02:19,500 --> 01:02:21,290
{\an8}After four hours on the track,
1341
01:02:21,380 --> 01:02:25,000
{\an8}we finally found a group
of North Koreans hard at work.
1342
01:02:25,380 --> 01:02:27,250
There were these logging camps,
1343
01:02:27,330 --> 01:02:30,460
and these were essentially,
like labor camps that were put together
1344
01:02:30,540 --> 01:02:32,880
with all the North Korean propaganda,
1345
01:02:32,960 --> 01:02:35,920
and Shane's producer saw that report,
1346
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:38,670
knew that Shane was obsessed
with North Korea,
1347
01:02:38,830 --> 01:02:41,380
and he was like,
"Can you produce this for Shane?
1348
01:02:41,460 --> 01:02:44,460
"We'll do a whole thing
for this thing called VBS TV."
1349
01:02:44,540 --> 01:02:47,380
You know? And I'd never heard
of VICE at that point,
1350
01:02:47,460 --> 01:02:50,170
so I had no idea who Shane was,
1351
01:02:50,250 --> 01:02:53,330
and he comes in,
and the first thing he does is,
1352
01:02:53,420 --> 01:02:59,210
like, start telling me how...
awful and bullshit the BBC is,
1353
01:02:59,920 --> 01:03:03,000
because I think he had a really big chip
on his shoulder about legacy media.
1354
01:03:03,080 --> 01:03:05,250
Yes. I was in a hot tub with him once,
1355
01:03:05,330 --> 01:03:08,750
and he told me that him and Elon Musk
were gonna buy the BBC,
1356
01:03:08,830 --> 01:03:11,540
and I was like,
"Isn't that a government channel?
1357
01:03:11,630 --> 01:03:14,290
"Like, wouldn't you have
to buy like England first?"
1358
01:03:14,380 --> 01:03:17,330
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's a public broadcaster.
1359
01:03:17,420 --> 01:03:20,080
You can't buy the BBC.
It's, like, ridiculous.
1360
01:03:21,130 --> 01:03:25,210
Probably one of the most embarrassing
incidents of my entire life
1361
01:03:25,290 --> 01:03:27,380
took place on that very first shoot.
1362
01:03:28,210 --> 01:03:31,000
We're standing in at one
of these remote North Korean labor camps
1363
01:03:31,080 --> 01:03:34,250
and there is a North Korean guy,
and Shane walks up to him,
1364
01:03:34,330 --> 01:03:38,290
and he starts singing
this national Korean song.
1365
01:03:38,380 --> 01:03:40,830
And he starts going...
1366
01:03:43,250 --> 01:03:46,420
And I'm like, "What is happening
right now? What are you doing?"
1367
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:52,000
Okay.
1368
01:04:09,420 --> 01:04:11,580
I think kind of nobody
knew what they were doing,
1369
01:04:11,670 --> 01:04:13,710
so there were no rules.
1370
01:04:13,790 --> 01:04:16,040
We could just do whatever we wanted.
1371
01:04:16,130 --> 01:04:18,290
It was the Outback Steakhouse of media.
1372
01:04:18,380 --> 01:04:20,000
No rules. Just right.
1373
01:04:21,210 --> 01:04:23,420
Until it all fucking went to shit.
1374
01:04:23,580 --> 01:04:25,540
- Yeah.
- You're an actual journalist.
1375
01:04:25,630 --> 01:04:26,790
In your opinion,
1376
01:04:26,880 --> 01:04:29,130
what do you think was that secret sauce
1377
01:04:29,210 --> 01:04:30,920
that you guys figured out
on the news side?
1378
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:32,290
Well, so we figured out,
1379
01:04:32,380 --> 01:04:36,500
A, that if you go places
and show things from the ground,
1380
01:04:37,830 --> 01:04:39,250
people will watch.
1381
01:04:39,330 --> 01:04:41,290
You don't even have
to release it on the same day.
1382
01:04:41,380 --> 01:04:42,540
You don't have to be first.
1383
01:04:42,630 --> 01:04:44,130
You just have to tell a story.
1384
01:04:44,540 --> 01:04:47,130
Let's say there was some
kind of a pro-Russia protest
1385
01:04:47,210 --> 01:04:49,880
that erupts outside
of a Ukrainian naval base
1386
01:04:49,960 --> 01:04:52,380
that's being held hostage
by the Russians, right?
1387
01:04:52,460 --> 01:04:55,670
{\an8}In the scenes of escalating violence
in eastern Ukraine
1388
01:04:55,750 --> 01:04:57,960
{\an8}this one is particularly sobering.
1389
01:05:00,500 --> 01:05:02,920
{\an8}CNN has a 2pm deadline,
1390
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:04,880
{\an8}so they film a few shots of B-roll,
1391
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:07,670
{\an8}they go back and they put it
on TV the same day.
1392
01:05:20,460 --> 01:05:21,880
{\an8}We stayed there all day,
1393
01:05:21,960 --> 01:05:24,580
{\an8}developed characters to see
what would happen to them,
1394
01:05:24,670 --> 01:05:26,040
{\an8}like what was their fate.
1395
01:05:26,130 --> 01:05:28,040
A bunch of guys put him
into the back of the car.
1396
01:05:28,130 --> 01:05:29,880
It doesn't look very official to me.
1397
01:05:29,960 --> 01:05:32,540
{\an8}And we tried to use
as little voiceover as possible.
1398
01:05:32,630 --> 01:05:34,710
{\an8}You know, we tried to let
all of the people
1399
01:05:34,790 --> 01:05:37,380
that we were filming speak for themselves.
1400
01:05:39,670 --> 01:05:42,290
{\an8}And sure, we didn't
put it out as fast as CNN did.
1401
01:05:42,380 --> 01:05:45,330
{\an8}We put it out the next day
or two days later, even three days later.
1402
01:05:45,420 --> 01:05:47,040
Our viewers didn't care,
1403
01:05:47,130 --> 01:05:50,330
because they were seeing something
that they never saw before.
1404
01:05:50,420 --> 01:05:54,380
Russia! Russia! Russia!
1405
01:05:54,960 --> 01:05:58,580
{\an8}Like they were seeing
what people's lives were actually like.
1406
01:06:03,500 --> 01:06:06,130
{\an8}But if they try to provoke us,
we will respond appropriately.
1407
01:06:11,460 --> 01:06:12,750
We didn't get a chance
to thank--
1408
01:06:12,830 --> 01:06:15,420
we wanna thank Eddy Moretti,
we started the whole show together,
1409
01:06:15,500 --> 01:06:18,630
and our showrunner,
Vijay, who is awesome.
1410
01:06:19,290 --> 01:06:22,250
When the company really got supercharged
1411
01:06:22,330 --> 01:06:25,330
and started to win awards,
a lot of it was your work,
1412
01:06:25,420 --> 01:06:27,500
you know, especially in the Ukraine.
1413
01:06:27,580 --> 01:06:29,460
Thank you for saying that.
1414
01:06:30,500 --> 01:06:34,170
It was really jarring
when VICE News got taken over
1415
01:06:34,250 --> 01:06:36,750
by this corporate hack
named Josh Tyrangiel.
1416
01:06:37,420 --> 01:06:41,290
The reason that HBO
and the Showtimes of the world
1417
01:06:41,380 --> 01:06:43,880
were interested in VICE
as a news outlet
1418
01:06:43,960 --> 01:06:46,080
was because of the
initial VICE News team
1419
01:06:46,170 --> 01:06:48,580
that I created with a bunch
of other people.
1420
01:06:48,670 --> 01:06:52,960
And so it was really weird
when the guys who sort of created the buzz
1421
01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:57,540
around the news operation
at VICE all get thrown out.
1422
01:06:57,920 --> 01:07:00,000
It was all about loyalty for him.
1423
01:07:00,080 --> 01:07:02,170
That was Josh Tyrangiel's position.
1424
01:07:02,250 --> 01:07:04,040
"We have to get rid of the old team.
1425
01:07:04,130 --> 01:07:07,420
"Everybody has to sort of follow
my each and every command,
1426
01:07:07,500 --> 01:07:11,000
"and I need to know that they're going
to be loyal to me and to me only."
1427
01:07:11,080 --> 01:07:13,210
But he couldn't like, really fire me
1428
01:07:13,290 --> 01:07:15,040
like he did the rest
of the VICE News team.
1429
01:07:15,170 --> 01:07:17,130
I was, you know, too big a deal.
1430
01:07:17,210 --> 01:07:20,830
I'd spent three days, you know,
in a cellar with a bag over my head,
1431
01:07:20,920 --> 01:07:24,670
getting the shit kicked out
of me by militants in Ukraine.
1432
01:07:43,500 --> 01:07:46,540
Josh was not able
to fire me like you know,
1433
01:07:46,630 --> 01:07:48,710
because it would
have been a bad look.
1434
01:07:48,790 --> 01:07:51,540
So he just tried to make
my life so miserable
1435
01:07:51,790 --> 01:07:54,210
that I would want to leave myself.
1436
01:07:54,290 --> 01:07:57,670
He made my raise conditional
on me moving to London.
1437
01:07:57,750 --> 01:08:02,040
He wanted to recalculate
my salary into British pounds,
1438
01:08:02,380 --> 01:08:05,830
but the pound was collapsing
at the time because of Brexit.
1439
01:08:05,960 --> 01:08:07,750
- Yeah.
- And I was like, "Okay.
1440
01:08:07,830 --> 01:08:10,460
"Well, you can't use this calculation
from a month ago
1441
01:08:10,540 --> 01:08:11,670
"when you gave me my raise.
1442
01:08:11,750 --> 01:08:13,670
"That's a twenty percent pay cut
into nothing."
1443
01:08:13,750 --> 01:08:16,420
And you had to move to London?
And I had to move to London for it.
1444
01:08:16,500 --> 01:08:19,170
And you know who all
of this was being done through?
1445
01:08:19,250 --> 01:08:20,290
Nancy Ashbrook.
1446
01:08:20,380 --> 01:08:21,790
You know who she is?
1447
01:08:22,250 --> 01:08:24,580
The Harvey Weinstein...?
1448
01:08:24,670 --> 01:08:27,290
The Harvey Weinstein HR lady.
1449
01:08:27,630 --> 01:08:28,880
Tough as bricks.
1450
01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:30,330
I mean, she was...
1451
01:08:30,420 --> 01:08:34,330
I remember the higher-ups at VICE were,
like, quite proud that they got her.
1452
01:08:34,420 --> 01:08:36,750
And I was like,
"Dude, it's the Harvey Weinstein--
1453
01:08:36,830 --> 01:08:38,920
"Like why are you guys proud of this?"
1454
01:08:39,000 --> 01:08:40,830
Like, "Yo, she's fucking sick."
1455
01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:45,380
Yeah, and Shane was always saying stuff
like that about his new hires.
1456
01:08:45,460 --> 01:08:47,630
But, you know credit where credit is due.
1457
01:08:47,830 --> 01:08:50,920
There was a sweet moment in, like, 2015
1458
01:08:51,000 --> 01:08:53,460
where every legacy media
around the world
1459
01:08:53,670 --> 01:08:56,460
was, like, interested
in what VICE was doing.
1460
01:08:56,540 --> 01:09:01,130
- Which to me, only makes it more tragic
- Yes.
1461
01:09:01,210 --> 01:09:04,040
that as soon as they had
cracked that code,
1462
01:09:04,130 --> 01:09:06,290
they threw it all out the window.
1463
01:09:06,380 --> 01:09:09,000
You know like some people don't learn
from their mistakes.
1464
01:09:09,210 --> 01:09:11,630
VICE doesn't learn from its successes.
1465
01:09:11,710 --> 01:09:16,000
So we still have the long-form VICE News
documentaries that you know us for,
1466
01:09:16,380 --> 01:09:18,830
but we're also gonna be doing
a lot more short-form stuff
1467
01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:21,130
breaking news,
live-streaming news,
1468
01:09:21,210 --> 01:09:24,460
and then we're gonna have a
whole halo of text and photos
1469
01:09:24,540 --> 01:09:25,790
and social media around it.
1470
01:09:25,880 --> 01:09:27,880
You're gonna get all that stuff
you know VICE for,
1471
01:09:27,960 --> 01:09:31,250
{\an8}but also a lot more VICE News. Bango.
1472
01:09:33,330 --> 01:09:37,750
2014 was the beginning
of VICE's peak financial success.
1473
01:09:37,830 --> 01:09:42,460
Shane had convinced everyone that VICE
was not only the future of digital media,
1474
01:09:42,540 --> 01:09:45,170
but also news and journalism
in this country.
1475
01:09:45,540 --> 01:09:47,250
Why is VICE worth so much
fucking money?
1476
01:09:47,330 --> 01:09:48,330
- Yes.
- $4 billion.
1477
01:09:48,420 --> 01:09:49,790
- $4 billion.
- They got a word in.
1478
01:09:49,880 --> 01:09:51,750
- More than $4 billion.
- Okay. $4.4 billion.
1479
01:09:51,830 --> 01:09:52,830
- There you go.
- Alright.
1480
01:09:52,920 --> 01:09:54,500
So that's $400 million.
1481
01:09:55,080 --> 01:09:57,380
- I'm not good at math.
- You just rounded it down.
1482
01:09:57,460 --> 01:09:59,500
- We rounded it down.
- Why? Because you guys are mean.
1483
01:09:59,580 --> 01:10:01,830
- No. Okay.
- If you were nice, you'd say "five."
1484
01:10:02,170 --> 01:10:03,290
- Okay.
- You'd round it up.
1485
01:10:03,380 --> 01:10:04,380
- Ten.
- Anyway...
1486
01:10:04,460 --> 01:10:05,460
- Ten.
- Ten.
1487
01:10:05,540 --> 01:10:06,960
- Ten.
- That's what I would say.
1488
01:10:07,040 --> 01:10:08,040
Yes.
1489
01:10:08,540 --> 01:10:09,920
'Cause I'm Shane.
1490
01:10:10,460 --> 01:10:14,000
So the whole thing is, is we sit there,
and we said, "Okay."
1491
01:10:14,960 --> 01:10:20,380
In 2014, VICE sold a ten percent share
of VICE Media to A+E Networks,
1492
01:10:20,460 --> 01:10:22,580
a joint venture of Hearst and Disney,
1493
01:10:22,920 --> 01:10:25,330
for $250 million,
1494
01:10:25,830 --> 01:10:29,710
valuing the company at $2.5 billion.
1495
01:10:30,540 --> 01:10:31,750
In the same year,
1496
01:10:31,830 --> 01:10:39,460
Shane was compensated
to the tune of $78,482,292.
1497
01:10:40,540 --> 01:10:42,250
Then in November 2015,
1498
01:10:42,330 --> 01:10:47,710
news broke the A+E cable channel H2
would be rebranded as Viceland.
1499
01:10:48,920 --> 01:10:50,420
A month later,
1500
01:10:50,500 --> 01:10:53,580
Disney doubled its stake
in VICE Media to $400 million,
1501
01:10:53,670 --> 01:10:56,830
and the company
was valued at $4 billion.
1502
01:10:58,170 --> 01:10:59,960
The next year, in 2015,
1503
01:11:00,040 --> 01:11:02,500
it was reported that Disney
offered to buy VICE
1504
01:11:02,580 --> 01:11:05,540
for $3 billion, but Shane declined,
1505
01:11:05,630 --> 01:11:07,790
claiming that in the next decade,
1506
01:11:07,880 --> 01:11:10,330
VICE would be worth $50 billion.
1507
01:11:11,460 --> 01:11:13,750
I used to have a personal relationship
with Shane.
1508
01:11:13,830 --> 01:11:16,040
I looked up to the guy and trusted him.
1509
01:11:16,130 --> 01:11:18,960
For years, I requested an accounting
of my residuals,
1510
01:11:19,040 --> 01:11:21,540
and there was no response from VICE.
1511
01:11:21,630 --> 01:11:23,130
But I never bothered Shane.
1512
01:11:23,710 --> 01:11:27,290
When VICE started to miss payments
to employees and vendors,
1513
01:11:27,380 --> 01:11:30,170
{\an8}I caught wind and hired an auditor
to look into my case.
1514
01:11:31,670 --> 01:11:33,880
By the time the auditor discovered
that VICE owed me
1515
01:11:33,960 --> 01:11:35,500
hundreds of thousands of dollars
1516
01:11:35,580 --> 01:11:37,170
and never reported it,
1517
01:11:37,250 --> 01:11:38,830
they went bankrupt.
1518
01:11:40,710 --> 01:11:42,460
I reached out to Shane about this,
1519
01:11:42,630 --> 01:11:43,920
and this was his response.
1520
01:11:56,790 --> 01:11:59,330
Eventually, the story became
bigger than my residuals,
1521
01:11:59,420 --> 01:12:01,000
and I started to ask questions.
1522
01:12:08,630 --> 01:12:13,330
But the only question he ever bothered
to respond to was this.
1523
01:12:30,290 --> 01:12:32,670
We're about to show you
financial documents
1524
01:12:32,750 --> 01:12:34,960
we received from a whistleblower
1525
01:12:35,040 --> 01:12:37,170
who declined to appear
in this documentary.
1526
01:12:38,210 --> 01:12:41,830
{\an8}In late 2016, Shane and VICE
went back to Disney,
1527
01:12:41,920 --> 01:12:44,880
{\an8}looking to be acquired,
but the jig was up.
1528
01:12:47,250 --> 01:12:50,080
By the time Disney did diligence in 2016,
1529
01:12:50,210 --> 01:12:52,790
all of VICE's numbers
were down across the board.
1530
01:12:54,290 --> 01:12:58,580
At that point, when the cracks started
to appear in VICE's financial picture,
1531
01:12:58,670 --> 01:13:01,130
{\an8}Shane doubled down
on his bullshit sales pitch
1532
01:13:01,330 --> 01:13:03,170
{\an8}and took on even more money.
1533
01:13:04,250 --> 01:13:05,670
But with that money
came the pressure
1534
01:13:05,750 --> 01:13:07,710
to continue scaling the brand,
1535
01:13:07,790 --> 01:13:09,630
and we all felt it as creatives.
1536
01:13:11,290 --> 01:13:12,710
VICE is one of the few brands
1537
01:13:12,790 --> 01:13:16,000
that really connects in a
meaningful way with millennials
1538
01:13:16,080 --> 01:13:17,670
as their center sweet spot.
1539
01:13:17,750 --> 01:13:19,420
{\an8}So I think that's--
it's the millennials
1540
01:13:19,500 --> 01:13:22,250
{\an8}that we want to get excited
about our business,
1541
01:13:22,330 --> 01:13:24,330
{\an8}and so VICE is the perfect fit.
1542
01:13:27,670 --> 01:13:30,420
For me, going Viceland,
it was a big mistake.
1543
01:13:30,630 --> 01:13:32,080
We were crushing the Internet.
1544
01:13:32,170 --> 01:13:33,580
The Internet's the future.
1545
01:13:33,670 --> 01:13:36,630
Why would you go backwards and partner
with this bum channel A+E?
1546
01:13:36,710 --> 01:13:38,330
Like, I don't watch anything on A+E.
1547
01:13:38,420 --> 01:13:40,420
Doing the worst thing
possible is hot.
1548
01:13:41,580 --> 01:13:44,130
Like, doing-- like,
'cause that's how he got them.
1549
01:13:44,290 --> 01:13:47,670
'Cause he was like, "I will get
the children to watch television."
1550
01:13:47,750 --> 01:13:49,670
And they were like,
"Oh, oh, oh."
1551
01:13:49,750 --> 01:13:51,880
That's what got things to the four billy.
1552
01:13:51,960 --> 01:13:53,330
They had to take it there,
1553
01:13:53,460 --> 01:13:55,880
which I respect,
but it was never gonna work.
1554
01:13:57,630 --> 01:13:59,460
Do you think it had to go this way,
1555
01:13:59,540 --> 01:14:03,830
or do you think the culture that, like,
we all contributed to could have survived
1556
01:14:03,920 --> 01:14:05,250
without this fucking flameout?
1557
01:14:05,670 --> 01:14:07,420
I just think like,
adults got in the room.
1558
01:14:07,500 --> 01:14:09,500
You know what I'm saying?
I think that grown-ups...
1559
01:14:09,580 --> 01:14:10,580
The cops came.
1560
01:14:10,670 --> 01:14:12,040
I think the cops came.
I'm serious.
1561
01:14:12,130 --> 01:14:13,750
And once the cops came
and were like,
1562
01:14:13,830 --> 01:14:16,420
"Let's do, like,
disruptive hyper-vertical
1563
01:14:16,500 --> 01:14:18,670
"like cloud-iterated,
end-to-end, snackable,
1564
01:14:18,750 --> 01:14:21,790
"stackable like fucking content,"
then like you're fucked.
1565
01:14:21,880 --> 01:14:24,210
People are like,
"Alright, how do we do this again?
1566
01:14:24,290 --> 01:14:27,540
"How do we formulaically,
algorithmically do this again?"
1567
01:14:27,630 --> 01:14:28,960
The way to stay ill is
to be like,
1568
01:14:29,040 --> 01:14:30,710
"No, we did that.
Let's do some new shit.
1569
01:14:30,790 --> 01:14:32,500
- "Let's do that."
- That's what I'm saying.
1570
01:14:32,580 --> 01:14:35,290
They were then being like,
"Well, here's what the data says.
1571
01:14:35,420 --> 01:14:36,790
"Here's what the kids are into."
1572
01:14:37,790 --> 01:14:39,880
And then, like, backing stuff into that.
1573
01:14:40,000 --> 01:14:41,000
That's not how you do it.
1574
01:14:41,080 --> 01:14:44,710
It really was coming from,
like Shane and Eddy Moretti
1575
01:14:44,790 --> 01:14:47,580
because they wanted us
to be more advertiser-friendly,
1576
01:14:47,670 --> 01:14:49,830
and that's when we lost our voice.
1577
01:14:49,920 --> 01:14:50,920
In fairness to Gavin,
1578
01:14:51,000 --> 01:14:53,880
the reason he left was
that he didn't want any of this shit.
1579
01:14:56,130 --> 01:14:58,130
Bro, what do you think
Shane is doing right now?
1580
01:14:58,210 --> 01:15:02,960
Like, after going from four billy
to no billy to like bankrupt?
1581
01:15:03,040 --> 01:15:05,580
If someone offers you four bill, take it.
1582
01:15:05,670 --> 01:15:06,880
- Take it.
- Like, I get it.
1583
01:15:06,960 --> 01:15:08,210
It's kind of a flex.
1584
01:15:08,290 --> 01:15:10,500
Like, "No, $8 billion."
1585
01:15:10,580 --> 01:15:11,830
- Yeah.
- You know what I mean?
1586
01:15:11,920 --> 01:15:13,920
Like, that's sick, but also like zero.
1587
01:15:14,000 --> 01:15:15,960
- I think it's gamblers' way.
- It's a scam. Yeah.
1588
01:15:16,040 --> 01:15:18,920
I feel like Shane's gamblers'
brain was just like,
1589
01:15:19,000 --> 01:15:20,960
"No, I'm gonna fucking win
the next hand."
1590
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:22,500
Just go fucking nuts.
1591
01:15:22,580 --> 01:15:24,130
I watched this fool gamble in Vegas,
1592
01:15:24,210 --> 01:15:27,830
and it was like,
we went for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight,
1593
01:15:27,920 --> 01:15:30,330
{\an8}and we started gambling before the fight.
1594
01:15:30,460 --> 01:15:32,290
{\an8}He went down a half million dollars
1595
01:15:32,380 --> 01:15:33,830
{\an8}and then didn't even
go to the fight.
1596
01:15:33,920 --> 01:15:35,540
He gives me his ticket, and he's like,
1597
01:15:35,630 --> 01:15:37,790
"Yo, go to the fight
without me, whatever."
1598
01:15:38,710 --> 01:15:42,540
I go to the fight, and I'm there sitting
with fucking Paulie Walnuts,
1599
01:15:42,750 --> 01:15:44,540
half the cast of "The Sopranos,"
1600
01:15:44,790 --> 01:15:46,880
watching the fucking fight.
1601
01:15:47,330 --> 01:15:49,630
He went to his room
and got a private dealer,
1602
01:15:49,710 --> 01:15:53,080
opened up like,
nine bottles of fucking DRC,
1603
01:15:53,170 --> 01:15:54,670
and was just gambling the whole time,
1604
01:15:54,750 --> 01:15:56,960
- never made it to the fight.
- You have a problem, sir.
1605
01:15:57,040 --> 01:15:58,750
Sir, you have a problem.
1606
01:15:58,830 --> 01:16:01,960
Eddy Moretti to me is the one
that creatively tanked the whole shit.
1607
01:16:02,040 --> 01:16:04,210
Eddy Moretti and his stupid hat, man.
1608
01:16:04,290 --> 01:16:05,670
- Spaghetti Moretti.
- Spaghetti.
1609
01:16:05,750 --> 01:16:08,790
I think, like,
the number one moment for me
1610
01:16:08,880 --> 01:16:10,880
that was the most magical
is like,
1611
01:16:11,750 --> 01:16:14,080
we were smoking a dip.
1612
01:16:14,250 --> 01:16:17,630
We were smoking formaldehyde
like right outside the VICE office.
1613
01:16:17,710 --> 01:16:19,630
What's that high like?
I just have to stop and--
1614
01:16:19,710 --> 01:16:22,290
It's just like, not that fun.
You're just like, "Ahh."
1615
01:16:22,380 --> 01:16:24,830
Like, you just don't feel good,
which is kind of cool.
1616
01:16:24,920 --> 01:16:27,250
And I remember looking inside,
and we were smoking,
1617
01:16:27,330 --> 01:16:30,250
and I'm like, "Who is that sitting
in the lobby? I recognize that guy."
1618
01:16:30,330 --> 01:16:31,580
Turns out it's Rupert Murdoch.
1619
01:16:32,040 --> 01:16:34,540
He was sort of courting them
on some level.
1620
01:16:34,630 --> 01:16:36,170
I was like in that moment, I think,
1621
01:16:36,250 --> 01:16:37,710
when you're, like, smoking a dip,
1622
01:16:37,790 --> 01:16:39,080
basically next
to Rupert Murdoch,
1623
01:16:39,170 --> 01:16:41,250
- like, that's the fucking thing.
- That's crazy.
1624
01:16:41,330 --> 01:16:43,380
But how long can something like that last?
1625
01:16:43,460 --> 01:16:45,210
You know what I'm saying? It can't.
1626
01:16:47,420 --> 01:16:49,790
As a person
who was at VICE for many years,
1627
01:16:49,880 --> 01:16:51,710
seeing how disorganized it was
1628
01:16:51,790 --> 01:16:54,040
and how a lot of it was a house of cards,
1629
01:16:54,130 --> 01:16:56,580
I started to wonder how this would end
1630
01:16:56,750 --> 01:16:59,960
and that it was possible
that there was a very, very bad end
1631
01:17:00,420 --> 01:17:03,580
because gamblers go up
and gamblers go down.
1632
01:17:03,830 --> 01:17:05,130
But once they go down,
1633
01:17:05,210 --> 01:17:08,130
they start to do crazy shit
to try and come back up.
1634
01:17:09,040 --> 01:17:11,710
When VICE started to experience
revenue shortfalls,
1635
01:17:11,790 --> 01:17:14,830
they began working in the shadows
with people like Philip Morris
1636
01:17:14,920 --> 01:17:17,210
to create lifestyle campaigns
promoting vaping
1637
01:17:17,290 --> 01:17:20,040
as a healthier alternative to cigarettes
1638
01:17:20,130 --> 01:17:22,210
because their metrics said that vaping
1639
01:17:22,290 --> 01:17:24,710
was a more profitable business.
1640
01:17:25,290 --> 01:17:28,130
Miles Skinner worked on
the Philip Morris team.
1641
01:17:28,380 --> 01:17:30,290
I know a lot of people who,
1642
01:17:30,380 --> 01:17:32,460
you know, have a bad taste
in their mouth about VICE.
1643
01:17:32,540 --> 01:17:34,290
I don't. I had a great time.
1644
01:17:34,380 --> 01:17:35,580
I had a great job.
1645
01:17:35,670 --> 01:17:37,130
I got to travel the world.
1646
01:17:37,210 --> 01:17:41,130
I got to be in really weird rooms
with interesting people.
1647
01:17:41,210 --> 01:17:42,420
You know, they had Virtue.
1648
01:17:42,500 --> 01:17:47,130
The version of Virtue
that was existing to that point
1649
01:17:47,210 --> 01:17:50,540
was more like, you know, VICE content
1650
01:17:50,630 --> 01:17:53,080
that looked like VICE content
that was really ads.
1651
01:17:55,710 --> 01:17:58,290
This was creating white label ad services.
1652
01:17:58,460 --> 01:18:00,000
In this episode of Rise As One,
1653
01:18:00,080 --> 01:18:02,500
our friends at Budweiser
sent us to Beijing
1654
01:18:02,670 --> 01:18:04,920
to see how a group
of local football lovers
1655
01:18:05,000 --> 01:18:07,540
are rallying their countrymen
to get out on the pitch.
1656
01:18:09,210 --> 01:18:14,830
Do you feel like VICE pioneered
a lot of that, like, branded content?
1657
01:18:15,290 --> 01:18:18,750
It's funny
because the VICE I knew and loved
1658
01:18:18,830 --> 01:18:21,630
was a bankrupt magazine
that threw great parties.
1659
01:18:21,710 --> 01:18:23,580
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know? And it was like...
1660
01:18:23,670 --> 01:18:25,500
hot girls, like good music.
1661
01:18:25,580 --> 01:18:27,830
Like, you know they had taste,
good photography,
1662
01:18:27,920 --> 01:18:28,920
all of that stuff.
1663
01:18:30,290 --> 01:18:34,210
I think they stumbled into something
that became their future.
1664
01:18:34,880 --> 01:18:37,420
You know, we booked
nine figures in business,
1665
01:18:37,500 --> 01:18:39,080
and some of that was for Virtue.
1666
01:18:39,170 --> 01:18:42,960
And then some was
when I moved on to a different team
1667
01:18:43,040 --> 01:18:48,170
that was a... little bit more clandestine.
1668
01:18:48,250 --> 01:18:49,290
- Yeah.
- You know?
1669
01:18:49,380 --> 01:18:53,750
And that was based around
one client, which was Philip Morris.
1670
01:18:54,420 --> 01:18:55,500
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
1671
01:18:56,000 --> 01:19:00,790
You know how do we get people
to quit smoking combustible cigarettes?
1672
01:19:01,210 --> 01:19:02,880
So, massive thought problem.
1673
01:19:02,960 --> 01:19:04,880
You know when they explained
their rationale,
1674
01:19:04,960 --> 01:19:05,960
it was of course,
1675
01:19:06,040 --> 01:19:08,290
get people to quit smoking
combustible cigarettes,
1676
01:19:08,380 --> 01:19:12,000
we create a market to sell them
non-combustible solutions.
1677
01:19:12,790 --> 01:19:15,500
And you know harm reduction,
you can spin it all ways.
1678
01:19:15,580 --> 01:19:17,460
You know Philip Morris has blood
on their hands.
1679
01:19:17,540 --> 01:19:20,000
Is the vape business
better for Philip Morris
1680
01:19:20,080 --> 01:19:21,380
than the
combustible cigarette--?
1681
01:19:21,460 --> 01:19:24,080
- Their metrics said yes.
- Ew.
1682
01:19:24,170 --> 01:19:26,170
We put together a strategy
1683
01:19:26,250 --> 01:19:30,210
that was around most
of these anti-smoking campaigns,
1684
01:19:30,290 --> 01:19:32,130
cessation campaigns.
1685
01:19:32,210 --> 01:19:33,880
It's telling people to do something.
1686
01:19:34,250 --> 01:19:37,080
And that's what Shane
was always selling companies,
1687
01:19:37,170 --> 01:19:39,460
was that,
"I know how to speak to that kid."
1688
01:19:39,540 --> 01:19:42,330
What do you think is at the core
of that perspective?
1689
01:19:42,420 --> 01:19:44,080
To that kid you're talking to,
1690
01:19:44,290 --> 01:19:47,040
what do you think it is
that we were all selling?
1691
01:19:47,130 --> 01:19:50,080
Make the cool guy feel rich
and the rich guy feel cool.
1692
01:19:50,170 --> 01:19:52,250
- Yeah.
- And, you know, it's yours.
1693
01:19:52,540 --> 01:19:53,710
Yeah.
1694
01:19:53,790 --> 01:19:55,420
And you can rule, you know?
1695
01:19:55,500 --> 01:19:57,710
It's like, it works.
1696
01:19:59,130 --> 01:20:02,170
People were coming to VICE,
I felt, for two reasons.
1697
01:20:02,250 --> 01:20:05,540
One, 'cause it was cool and it was like,
"Tell us what's cool."
1698
01:20:05,630 --> 01:20:07,540
Two is, you figured out the Internet.
1699
01:20:07,630 --> 01:20:10,750
And figured out you know,
how to get over on it.
1700
01:20:10,830 --> 01:20:14,210
You know? I mean,
it was, like, a lot of it was scam.
1701
01:20:19,290 --> 01:20:20,880
VICE made a lot of money by
1702
01:20:20,960 --> 01:20:23,790
basically playing three-card
monte with Internet traffic.
1703
01:20:24,170 --> 01:20:26,630
And Taylor Lorenz,
who wrote Extremely Online,
1704
01:20:26,710 --> 01:20:28,960
is an expert on this matter.
1705
01:20:29,040 --> 01:20:31,250
They did a lot of growth hacks
because they needed to,
1706
01:20:31,330 --> 01:20:33,040
because they had to deliver
those audiences.
1707
01:20:34,040 --> 01:20:36,290
So the metrics were always bullshit.
1708
01:20:36,710 --> 01:20:38,960
Throughout like the early,
mid-2010s you know,
1709
01:20:39,040 --> 01:20:42,170
Facebook is just juicing traffic
to media companies.
1710
01:20:42,250 --> 01:20:44,790
They weren't able to drive enough traffic
from their own pages.
1711
01:20:44,880 --> 01:20:46,330
So they would, like,
do these swaps,
1712
01:20:46,420 --> 01:20:47,830
where they would buy traffic.
1713
01:20:47,920 --> 01:20:50,170
Basically they would like pay for traffic
1714
01:20:50,250 --> 01:20:52,710
that they could then claim as their own.
1715
01:20:53,170 --> 01:20:55,580
It was like, "Well, let's
fudge the numbers this quarter.
1716
01:20:55,670 --> 01:20:57,830
"Yeah, we're gonna get
some traffic from here and there
1717
01:20:57,920 --> 01:20:59,040
"but like, it'll work out."
1718
01:20:59,130 --> 01:21:01,210
'Cause it was all like,
trickery and these like,
1719
01:21:01,290 --> 01:21:03,920
digital marketing,
kind of sleights of hand.
1720
01:21:04,210 --> 01:21:06,960
And it was about
sort of projecting success
1721
01:21:07,040 --> 01:21:09,790
and coolness and culture,
which is--
1722
01:21:09,880 --> 01:21:12,960
if you don't have the kind
of business to back it up
1723
01:21:13,040 --> 01:21:15,250
or the community to back it up,
then you're screwed.
1724
01:21:15,330 --> 01:21:18,170
I got an e-mail from a VICE employee
1725
01:21:18,250 --> 01:21:21,630
that was very high up
in sales on an Apple campaign.
1726
01:21:21,710 --> 01:21:26,040
And Apple actually found out
that they were buying traffic
1727
01:21:26,130 --> 01:21:30,540
from Pornhub
and attributing it to their numbers.
1728
01:21:30,630 --> 01:21:33,380
Well, because they would do
VICE Media Network or something.
1729
01:21:33,460 --> 01:21:37,540
They had all these ways of,
like, obscuring that.
1730
01:21:38,710 --> 01:21:39,920
{\an8}And then when you dug into it,
1731
01:21:40,000 --> 01:21:43,380
{\an8}you're like, "Okay, but that's not VICE
dot-com that you're talking about here.
1732
01:21:43,460 --> 01:21:45,710
{\an8}"You're talking about all these
other weird websites."
1733
01:21:45,790 --> 01:21:47,210
{\an8}So that you can claim
their numbers.
1734
01:21:47,290 --> 01:21:49,000
{\an8}It's insane because the people at VICE
1735
01:21:49,080 --> 01:21:51,880
didn't even tag it to the dates
of the campaign correctly.
1736
01:21:51,960 --> 01:21:54,330
- Wow.
- Like, they were that negligent.
1737
01:21:54,420 --> 01:21:55,420
Yeah.
1738
01:21:55,500 --> 01:21:59,290
Not only was VICE negligent
in reporting fake Internet traffic
1739
01:21:59,380 --> 01:22:01,920
on a million-dollar
ad campaign for Apple,
1740
01:22:02,000 --> 01:22:04,670
but it was malicious
in its direction of employees,
1741
01:22:04,750 --> 01:22:08,250
like Mitchell Sunderland,
who VICE fucked so badly
1742
01:22:08,330 --> 01:22:10,790
that he ended up
having to change his name.
1743
01:22:12,460 --> 01:22:14,580
Mitchell Sunderland was a staff writer
1744
01:22:14,670 --> 01:22:15,880
and an editor at VICE,
1745
01:22:15,960 --> 01:22:17,330
might have been 2018.
1746
01:22:17,420 --> 01:22:19,460
{\an8}A mutual friend of ours walks
through the door,
1747
01:22:19,540 --> 01:22:22,210
{\an8}and she goes, "Oh, my God.
What's this shit going on with Mitchell?"
1748
01:22:22,290 --> 01:22:24,040
{\an8}And I was like,
"What are you talking about?"
1749
01:22:24,130 --> 01:22:25,130
She's like, "Google it."
1750
01:22:25,830 --> 01:22:29,330
Every fucking news publication
has an article.
1751
01:22:29,880 --> 01:22:31,130
"VICE's Mitchell Sunderland.
1752
01:22:31,540 --> 01:22:33,790
"Email thread with neo-Nazis,"
blah, blah, blah.
1753
01:22:33,880 --> 01:22:35,040
All this stuff.
1754
01:22:35,130 --> 01:22:37,250
So like it doesn't look good for Mitchell.
1755
01:22:38,630 --> 01:22:41,130
Mitchell was given a directive by VICE
1756
01:22:41,210 --> 01:22:43,790
to maintain relationships
1757
01:22:43,880 --> 01:22:46,420
with Ann Coulter
and Milo Yiannopoulos,
1758
01:22:46,500 --> 01:22:48,670
who had actually written
for VICE in the past,
1759
01:22:48,750 --> 01:22:53,380
to cede VICE articles to Breitbart
1760
01:22:53,500 --> 01:22:55,130
and other right-wing publications
1761
01:22:55,250 --> 01:22:57,080
because allegedly,
1762
01:22:57,170 --> 01:22:59,880
- they had better traffic than VICE did.
- Yeah.
1763
01:22:59,960 --> 01:23:02,380
People who were studying traffic
at the time
1764
01:23:02,460 --> 01:23:04,750
were seeing that right-wing people
1765
01:23:04,830 --> 01:23:07,960
would be more likely
to click on a VICE link
1766
01:23:08,040 --> 01:23:09,710
if they saw that the person posting it
1767
01:23:09,790 --> 01:23:13,170
was railing on VICE
rather than if they were saying,
1768
01:23:13,250 --> 01:23:15,130
"Look at this great thing
that VICE is posting."
1769
01:23:15,880 --> 01:23:19,250
Nobody bothered us, you know
as long as we were earning.
1770
01:23:19,330 --> 01:23:21,000
I mean, you've been to the London office.
1771
01:23:21,080 --> 01:23:23,750
We were in a separate building
1772
01:23:23,830 --> 01:23:27,250
like, down the block and
around some weird little Shoreditch alley.
1773
01:23:27,330 --> 01:23:30,750
And, you know, our seats
in London were...
1774
01:23:31,460 --> 01:23:34,330
We were sitting with
or right above the guys
1775
01:23:34,420 --> 01:23:39,330
that were starting the work with Saudis.
1776
01:23:39,920 --> 01:23:42,210
It was at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul
1777
01:23:42,290 --> 01:23:45,460
that Jamal Khashoggi met his brutal end.
1778
01:23:45,540 --> 01:23:47,500
He'd been lured there to discuss paperwork
1779
01:23:47,580 --> 01:23:48,830
for his upcoming wedding.
1780
01:23:49,250 --> 01:23:51,580
But he was strangled as soon
as he entered the building
1781
01:23:51,670 --> 01:23:53,830
by a team of Saudi assassins.
1782
01:23:53,920 --> 01:23:56,420
- I was privy to a little bit of it.
- Yeah.
1783
01:23:56,500 --> 01:24:00,330
You know. I saw maybe one of those briefs,
and it was very, very early,
1784
01:24:00,420 --> 01:24:02,210
and it had to do with tourism
1785
01:24:02,290 --> 01:24:08,080
and their ultimate goals of making it
an inbound tourist destination
1786
01:24:08,170 --> 01:24:09,880
for people under 35.
1787
01:24:11,130 --> 01:24:14,830
Camels hold a very special place
in Saudi Arabia's heart.
1788
01:24:16,790 --> 01:24:22,210
They've been used for centuries
as transportation, food, even as currency.
1789
01:24:22,500 --> 01:24:25,920
This annual month-long
celebration of everything camel
1790
01:24:26,000 --> 01:24:29,790
is a chance to see and be seen
for the country's elite.
1791
01:24:32,630 --> 01:24:36,960
{\an8}Saudi Arabia's tourism board
paid VICE millions of dollars
1792
01:24:37,040 --> 01:24:40,080
to make a video covering camel races.
1793
01:24:40,630 --> 01:24:44,000
Arabian camel racing has been around
since the 7th century,
1794
01:24:44,080 --> 01:24:46,420
but has grown in popularity
in recent years
1795
01:24:46,500 --> 01:24:48,250
due to the huge prizes on offer.
1796
01:24:48,630 --> 01:24:52,040
World leaders and dignitaries
enter their prized beasts.
1797
01:24:52,710 --> 01:24:56,750
They actually trick a VICE journalist
to go post this episode.
1798
01:24:57,960 --> 01:25:01,250
{\an8}I've learned, I mean,
they call us producers, right?
1799
01:25:01,330 --> 01:25:02,790
I mean, I was a host.
1800
01:25:03,080 --> 01:25:04,670
I guess I was a content creator.
1801
01:25:06,290 --> 01:25:08,210
They've just decided that I should ride.
1802
01:25:11,920 --> 01:25:14,960
The person had no idea
that it was a fluff piece
1803
01:25:15,040 --> 01:25:17,130
for Saudi Arabia's tourism board.
1804
01:25:17,210 --> 01:25:19,460
This is a time of massive flux,
1805
01:25:19,540 --> 01:25:22,000
so how better to deal with that
than to remind yourself
1806
01:25:22,080 --> 01:25:24,380
of your roots,
your regional identity,
1807
01:25:24,460 --> 01:25:26,880
and celebrate the camel.
1808
01:25:26,960 --> 01:25:29,500
They would just film the person's VO
1809
01:25:29,830 --> 01:25:31,330
and have the person say things
1810
01:25:31,420 --> 01:25:33,290
that they needed for this tourism video.
1811
01:25:33,790 --> 01:25:37,000
As I watched the highly choreographed
closing ceremony,
1812
01:25:37,080 --> 01:25:39,710
it was clear that in modern Saudi Arabia,
1813
01:25:39,790 --> 01:25:41,290
camels remain important.
1814
01:25:41,830 --> 01:25:45,250
They may not be a main source
of transport or food,
1815
01:25:45,330 --> 01:25:46,750
but to Saudi's elite,
1816
01:25:46,830 --> 01:25:49,170
like Naif and the country's leadership,
1817
01:25:49,710 --> 01:25:54,250
they're a source of national pride
and even regional solidarity.
1818
01:25:55,830 --> 01:25:59,920
You know, that's another
three card monte, VICE, kind of...
1819
01:26:01,170 --> 01:26:03,330
you know, that's an old standard trick.
1820
01:26:04,130 --> 01:26:06,960
I haven't talked publicly
about VICE hardly at all
1821
01:26:07,040 --> 01:26:08,250
for, like, various reasons.
1822
01:26:09,670 --> 01:26:11,380
But also because I'm worried that if I do,
1823
01:26:11,460 --> 01:26:13,040
I'm just going to talk so much shit
1824
01:26:13,130 --> 01:26:14,670
and I'm never going to be able to stop.
1825
01:26:14,750 --> 01:26:17,960
Are you excited
of the idea of meeting MBS?
1826
01:26:18,460 --> 01:26:21,170
Of course.
He's our new king.
1827
01:26:21,250 --> 01:26:23,080
We are moving with him.
1828
01:26:23,170 --> 01:26:24,580
We are changing with him.
1829
01:26:24,670 --> 01:26:25,750
For the better.
1830
01:26:27,080 --> 01:26:30,290
What we look at is saying, okay,
when I say partner with brands,
1831
01:26:30,380 --> 01:26:31,920
I mean partner,
like production partner.
1832
01:26:32,000 --> 01:26:33,170
So we make it together.
1833
01:26:33,250 --> 01:26:34,880
We exploit it together.
1834
01:26:34,960 --> 01:26:36,500
And that could be a TV show.
1835
01:26:36,580 --> 01:26:38,920
It could be a short form.
It could be long form.
1836
01:26:39,000 --> 01:26:40,000
It could be a film.
1837
01:26:40,540 --> 01:26:41,880
As revenue was falling,
1838
01:26:41,960 --> 01:26:44,960
Shane doubled down on the
further narrowing of the brand.
1839
01:26:45,380 --> 01:26:49,080
Everything needed to feel
like a sibling of the VICE on HBO show
1840
01:26:49,170 --> 01:26:51,250
because urgent, salacious journalism
1841
01:26:51,330 --> 01:26:54,710
was the one thing investors
and legacy media understood.
1842
01:26:56,080 --> 01:26:57,830
Let's talk about what you're doing.
1843
01:26:57,920 --> 01:27:00,250
{\an8}Now, there's been, like,
90 articles about your efforts.
1844
01:27:00,670 --> 01:27:02,290
{\an8}Mostly, "We're going to fuck shit up.
1845
01:27:02,380 --> 01:27:04,080
{\an8}"We're going to fuck the shit
out of things.
1846
01:27:04,170 --> 01:27:06,130
"Fucking shit, shit, fuck,"
stuff like that.
1847
01:27:06,210 --> 01:27:08,040
So what are you doing?
1848
01:27:09,710 --> 01:27:12,330
- Fucking shit up.
- Okay. Alright.
1849
01:27:13,250 --> 01:27:17,000
What we're famous for is giving over,
Dylan going electric,
1850
01:27:17,080 --> 01:27:21,210
giving over the company to people...
1851
01:27:21,290 --> 01:27:23,460
Like, for example,
a lot of people who are doing TV,
1852
01:27:23,540 --> 01:27:25,380
all the people
who are doing our monetization
1853
01:27:25,460 --> 01:27:29,000
have never done anything in TV
and, or TV monetization before,
1854
01:27:29,080 --> 01:27:30,500
and that's our strength.
1855
01:27:30,580 --> 01:27:32,580
- That you don't know anything?
- Exactly.
1856
01:27:32,710 --> 01:27:34,080
- Okay.
- Ignorance is--
1857
01:27:34,170 --> 01:27:36,380
Now, you do have some executives
they've brought in th--
1858
01:27:36,460 --> 01:27:39,330
Yeah, on the business side, for sure,
because as we grow,
1859
01:27:39,420 --> 01:27:41,790
we're doing a lot
of international TV deals,
1860
01:27:41,880 --> 01:27:42,960
a lot of mobile deals.
1861
01:27:43,040 --> 01:27:44,290
We don't want
to get hoodwinked,
1862
01:27:44,380 --> 01:27:47,130
so we have people coming over
from Discovery and other companies,
1863
01:27:47,210 --> 01:27:48,880
but I'm talking about
on the creation side.
1864
01:27:48,960 --> 01:27:50,790
So you have people
that don't know anything--
1865
01:27:50,880 --> 01:27:53,080
- Correct.
- And the point being, we're so stupid,
1866
01:27:53,170 --> 01:27:54,710
we can't fuck up?
1867
01:27:54,830 --> 01:27:55,830
- Correct.
- Okay.
1868
01:27:56,960 --> 01:27:59,080
It seems strange watching Shane talk
1869
01:27:59,170 --> 01:28:02,000
about how he installs creatives
who don't know what they're doing,
1870
01:28:02,080 --> 01:28:04,790
but it was code
for the existing VICE creatives
1871
01:28:04,880 --> 01:28:07,210
like myself and the people
who worked on our show.
1872
01:28:07,630 --> 01:28:08,630
It was all posturing
1873
01:28:08,710 --> 01:28:12,880
to make it seem like he was going
to retain the punk rock essence of VICE,
1874
01:28:12,960 --> 01:28:13,960
but in fact,
1875
01:28:14,040 --> 01:28:16,420
he was installing parrots on every show.
1876
01:28:16,790 --> 01:28:18,750
We ended up having to answer
to a showrunner
1877
01:28:18,830 --> 01:28:21,500
that came from
Cesar Millan the Dog Whisperer.
1878
01:28:26,210 --> 01:28:29,250
This guy was on this episode
encouraging my brother and I
1879
01:28:29,330 --> 01:28:30,960
to stay at the Sausage Castle,
1880
01:28:31,040 --> 01:28:34,500
despite our protests about what
Mike Busey was doing to people.
1881
01:28:37,250 --> 01:28:39,580
Now, that's what I call
"fresh off the boat", brother.
1882
01:28:39,670 --> 01:28:40,830
What's up, man?
1883
01:28:40,920 --> 01:28:44,330
{\an8}And for some reason, these white dudes
always want to remind me that I'm Chinese.
1884
01:28:54,540 --> 01:28:57,380
You gotta get control of this shoot,
there's guns going off everywhere,
1885
01:28:57,460 --> 01:28:58,790
and son's throwing grenades.
1886
01:28:58,920 --> 01:29:00,080
Son's throwing grenades.
1887
01:29:00,170 --> 01:29:01,670
I mean, son was throwing grenades,
1888
01:29:01,790 --> 01:29:03,460
and I was really like, man,
1889
01:29:03,540 --> 01:29:06,080
we really need better
gun control laws in this country.
1890
01:29:06,420 --> 01:29:10,040
You're going to take your finger, and...
1891
01:29:10,170 --> 01:29:12,960
- Wait, wait, wait. Please don't shoot.
- Oh, damn!
1892
01:29:13,040 --> 01:29:15,210
At one point,
they almost shot our DP,
1893
01:29:15,290 --> 01:29:17,380
- Christopher Valona.
- You okay, CV?
1894
01:29:17,460 --> 01:29:20,460
Yeah, I'm okay. I heard, like,
it's like the war.
1895
01:29:20,880 --> 01:29:22,500
Welcome to my house.
1896
01:29:22,920 --> 01:29:25,040
And we were
still asked to finish the scene.
1897
01:29:25,130 --> 01:29:26,670
I didn't know
that you were gonna shoot.
1898
01:29:27,130 --> 01:29:29,750
I was going to come in
with a countdown, LA.
1899
01:29:30,170 --> 01:29:31,750
Okay. Like,
I'm getting ready to shoot.
1900
01:29:31,830 --> 01:29:34,330
Everyone stand by,
so you don't shit yourselves.
1901
01:29:35,540 --> 01:29:37,500
This is what Jesse was talking about
1902
01:29:37,580 --> 01:29:39,920
when he said Shane became P.T. Barnum
1903
01:29:40,000 --> 01:29:41,130
selling the freaks.
1904
01:29:41,500 --> 01:29:45,040
It wasn't the same voice
that Gavin, Jesse, and Amy
1905
01:29:45,130 --> 01:29:48,000
had crafted with satire
and a subversive purpose.
1906
01:29:48,540 --> 01:29:50,040
It wasn't even weird for weird.
1907
01:29:50,130 --> 01:29:53,670
It was weird for money,
and I wanted out.
1908
01:29:53,750 --> 01:29:55,960
Go over to the camera
and say that in Chinese.
1909
01:29:56,540 --> 01:29:57,750
- Into the cameras.
- I don't--
1910
01:29:57,830 --> 01:30:00,290
Just make some shit up and say--
make it sound Asian.
1911
01:30:08,250 --> 01:30:12,880
Allow the sake
to flow down her juicy pooper.
1912
01:30:12,960 --> 01:30:15,420
Into LA's mouth.
Open up wide, LA.
1913
01:30:20,460 --> 01:30:22,670
- Sake fruit salad.
- This fucking sucks.
1914
01:30:24,080 --> 01:30:26,670
This is the sake fruit salad here.
1915
01:30:28,580 --> 01:30:30,210
I'm sorry. This sucks.
1916
01:30:33,580 --> 01:30:34,580
What's up, dude?
1917
01:30:34,670 --> 01:30:37,170
- Hey, mind if I talk to you for a second?
- No, it's fine, man.
1918
01:30:37,250 --> 01:30:39,250
I mean, my thing is really,
I just like...
1919
01:30:39,960 --> 01:30:41,750
You know, man,
this isn't my thing.
1920
01:30:41,830 --> 01:30:45,710
It's just like, I feel like
that you're a fucking hilarious dude,
1921
01:30:45,790 --> 01:30:48,000
and all this shit is hilarious,
and it's fun to be here.
1922
01:30:48,080 --> 01:30:50,170
But you just got to be careful
not to use people.
1923
01:30:50,290 --> 01:30:52,380
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you're using LA.,
1924
01:30:52,460 --> 01:30:54,960
and he's kind of this, like,
funny Black guy with a big stomach.
1925
01:30:55,040 --> 01:30:58,210
You're using the Asian girl to come,
like, speak Chinese on camera.
1926
01:30:58,290 --> 01:31:00,500
You just got to be careful
about the way you use people.
1927
01:31:00,580 --> 01:31:02,670
And the women like--
you know what I'm saying?
1928
01:31:02,750 --> 01:31:05,040
Well, behind all this shit, man, honestly,
1929
01:31:05,130 --> 01:31:07,000
- we're all from different walks.
- Yeah.
1930
01:31:07,080 --> 01:31:09,130
Black, white, Christian, atheist.
1931
01:31:09,210 --> 01:31:10,670
You hung out with Jews today,
1932
01:31:10,750 --> 01:31:12,750
Asians, dumb motherf*** like me.
1933
01:31:12,830 --> 01:31:14,630
- Yeah.
- And the whole thing is,
1934
01:31:14,710 --> 01:31:20,330
we all find a common ground
in our just being that outsider.
1935
01:31:20,420 --> 01:31:23,790
For me, watching and being a part of it,
I'm uncomfortable.
1936
01:31:23,920 --> 01:31:27,330
And I feel like people who watch this
are gonna laugh at you.
1937
01:31:27,420 --> 01:31:28,750
They're gonna laugh at LA.
1938
01:31:28,830 --> 01:31:31,080
They're gonna laugh
at the girl with the melons.
1939
01:31:31,170 --> 01:31:34,040
But I think you should just think about,
what is it you're trying to say?
1940
01:31:34,130 --> 01:31:36,460
- I apologize for any--
- Don't--
1941
01:31:36,540 --> 01:31:38,540
- But I do, man.
- Thank you. We're good.
1942
01:31:38,630 --> 01:31:39,830
Thanks for coming.
1943
01:31:44,790 --> 01:31:48,210
{\an8}While VICE had me boxing
to sell ads at their upfront,
1944
01:31:48,960 --> 01:31:51,920
I was fighting their lawyers
behind the scenes for my residuals.
1945
01:31:52,380 --> 01:31:54,080
We chased it for years.
1946
01:31:54,170 --> 01:31:56,330
But by the time VICE
finally acknowledged the debt,
1947
01:31:57,170 --> 01:31:58,500
they were bankrupt.
1948
01:31:59,960 --> 01:32:01,830
I challenged the bankruptcy,
1949
01:32:03,130 --> 01:32:05,000
made my claim,
1950
01:32:05,130 --> 01:32:07,210
and although
they never paid me my money...
1951
01:32:10,710 --> 01:32:13,540
I traded that debt
for the rights to my show
1952
01:32:13,630 --> 01:32:15,750
and cancelled out my NDA with VICE.
1953
01:32:17,000 --> 01:32:18,790
By having that footage and freedom,
1954
01:32:18,880 --> 01:32:21,000
I was able to make this documentary.
1955
01:32:22,040 --> 01:32:27,290
I traded hundreds of thousands of dollars
for the right to tell this story.
1956
01:32:29,710 --> 01:32:31,670
People ask me all the time
why I went to VICE
1957
01:32:31,750 --> 01:32:33,750
despite people
like Choe telling me not to.
1958
01:32:34,670 --> 01:32:36,380
I went to VICE because at one point,
1959
01:32:36,460 --> 01:32:38,250
it was fucking amazing.
1960
01:32:38,330 --> 01:32:40,330
It was a place you could be weird
and have a voice
1961
01:32:40,420 --> 01:32:44,080
and for lack of a better term,
be your goddamn self.
1962
01:32:44,460 --> 01:32:46,580
It was like
Professor X's School for Mutants
1963
01:32:46,670 --> 01:32:48,540
or Bruce Wayne's Gotham orphanage
1964
01:32:48,630 --> 01:32:51,330
or Derek Zoolander's
School for Kids Who Don't Read Good.
1965
01:32:52,000 --> 01:32:53,460
That's why we all went,
1966
01:32:53,540 --> 01:32:55,670
because we didn't fit in anywhere else.
1967
01:32:55,750 --> 01:32:58,040
And despite this insanely negligent,
1968
01:32:58,130 --> 01:33:00,380
borderline malicious environment,
1969
01:33:00,460 --> 01:33:02,960
a lot of good people
did a lot of good work.
1970
01:33:03,460 --> 01:33:05,710
VICE gave us a home
to tell stories from the gutter,
1971
01:33:06,460 --> 01:33:08,960
and the hope was that
by telling these stories,
1972
01:33:09,040 --> 01:33:10,540
you could change shit.
1973
01:33:22,630 --> 01:33:25,630
We had a purpose,
and VICE made a brand out of it.
1974
01:33:26,750 --> 01:33:28,710
But once that brand
became bigger than the people
1975
01:33:28,790 --> 01:33:32,000
and the stories and the multitudes
it hoped to contain...
1976
01:33:32,420 --> 01:33:33,880
It's not this, like, precious thing,
1977
01:33:33,960 --> 01:33:35,380
but it's this thing that's like--
1978
01:33:35,460 --> 01:33:36,790
it's a, it's a...
1979
01:33:38,250 --> 01:33:39,630
It was worthless.
1980
01:33:42,380 --> 01:33:44,790
The world is full of stories like this.
1981
01:33:44,880 --> 01:33:46,630
I saw a lot of them on Huang's World,
1982
01:33:46,710 --> 01:33:49,920
and in the end,
there was one salt miner in Peru
1983
01:33:50,000 --> 01:33:52,210
that reminds me of my time at VICE.
1984
01:33:54,420 --> 01:33:59,460
In America, if you sell
one bottle of this pink salt,
1985
01:33:59,540 --> 01:34:00,880
like, six to eight ounces,
1986
01:34:00,960 --> 01:34:04,250
people are paying
upwards of $10 or $12 for it.
1987
01:34:04,710 --> 01:34:05,750
Did you know that?
1988
01:34:09,960 --> 01:34:14,170
So you guys are not aware of the amount
of money they sell your salt for?
1989
01:34:42,080 --> 01:34:44,710
The desire to scale Peruvian pink salt
1990
01:34:44,790 --> 01:34:47,670
or VICE magazine so
everyone can experience it
1991
01:34:48,130 --> 01:34:52,000
instantly kills that thing
you loved about it in the first place.
1992
01:34:52,630 --> 01:34:54,250
There's a magical number of people
1993
01:34:54,330 --> 01:34:56,790
who are meant to enjoy
or experience something,
1994
01:34:57,330 --> 01:34:59,540
and the second
you cross that threshold,
1995
01:34:59,710 --> 01:35:01,710
it becomes a pumpkin.
1996
01:35:03,040 --> 01:35:04,750
VICE is broke
1997
01:35:05,790 --> 01:35:09,130
because greed scaled it
to a point where it mutated
1998
01:35:09,500 --> 01:35:12,880
and no longer resembled
what made it special in the first place.
1999
01:35:14,580 --> 01:35:16,880
Not everyone is gonna
get to smoke formaldehyde
2000
01:35:16,960 --> 01:35:19,170
next to Rupert Murdoch at the VICE office.
2001
01:35:20,130 --> 01:35:22,040
You kind of just had to be there.
2002
01:35:37,960 --> 01:35:40,630
Oh, I mean,
but these pants are weird.
2003
01:35:41,130 --> 01:35:43,330
{\an8}Alright, you pick where it goes.
2004
01:35:43,420 --> 01:35:45,630
{\an8}- Okay, right side for sure.
- That's pretty big.
2005
01:35:45,710 --> 01:35:46,750
{\an8}Is this the biggest one?
2006
01:35:46,830 --> 01:35:48,170
{\an8}- That's the biggest.
- Okay.
2007
01:35:48,250 --> 01:35:49,670
{\an8}Here, I'm gonna keep it there.
2008
01:35:49,750 --> 01:35:51,960
{\an8}I'm just gonna line it up
just a little bit.
2009
01:35:52,080 --> 01:35:54,210
{\an8}Yeah, yeah,
'cause it's a little slanted.
2010
01:35:54,630 --> 01:35:57,830
But isn't it going to,
like, isn't your body just...
2011
01:35:59,460 --> 01:36:01,460
I still want someone to claim the panties.
2012
01:36:01,580 --> 01:36:03,880
- Oh, you feel it, huh?
- No, that's good.
2013
01:36:04,580 --> 01:36:06,380
{\an8}Alright, try not--
try to hold still.
2014
01:36:06,880 --> 01:36:09,080
{\an8}I'll chill out
if you put a couple fingers in there.
2015
01:36:10,040 --> 01:36:12,460
{\an8}I might have to do it
to hold you in place.
2016
01:36:12,960 --> 01:36:15,290
{\an8}Was that Amber Rose
that was telling everybody
2017
01:36:15,380 --> 01:36:16,790
that Kanye liked fingers
in his ass?
2018
01:36:17,380 --> 01:36:20,790
Yeah, yeah, she was like,
Mr. Finger in the Booty Boy or something.
2019
01:36:21,210 --> 01:36:24,460
Most geniuses are left-handed
and like fingers in their ass.
2020
01:36:24,540 --> 01:36:26,170
{\an8}I know a lot of geniuses.
2021
01:36:28,710 --> 01:36:30,880
Woo was on an episode
with us too, right, Nick?
2022
01:36:30,960 --> 01:36:32,630
Yeah. Before we went
to Taiwan as a pickup.
2023
01:36:32,710 --> 01:36:33,920
{\an8}Yeah.
2024
01:36:34,000 --> 01:36:36,960
{\an8}Remember the guy
in China did some shit like,
2025
01:36:37,210 --> 01:36:38,210
{\an8}"You a party boy?
2026
01:36:38,290 --> 01:36:39,630
{\an8}"Yo, you're a fun guy, right?"
2027
01:36:41,170 --> 01:36:42,500
{\an8}Then you were like, "What?"
2028
01:36:42,580 --> 01:36:44,920
He's like,
"Yeah, you're like a fun guy, right?"
2029
01:36:45,000 --> 01:36:48,290
We were in that bar
that gave us fucking... the balloons.
2030
01:36:48,630 --> 01:36:50,210
That was one of the guys.
2031
01:36:51,170 --> 01:36:52,170
Yeah.
2032
01:36:56,130 --> 01:36:59,420
{\an8}I remember, we go
to this underground fucking bar,
2033
01:36:59,540 --> 01:37:02,380
{\an8}and I think we're just gonna drink
and stuff and I look at the tab,
2034
01:37:02,920 --> 01:37:04,790
{\an8}but they started putting
balloons on it,
2035
01:37:05,040 --> 01:37:08,420
{\an8}and everyone was doing balloons,
and I was like, "Oh, this is so sick."
2036
01:37:08,500 --> 01:37:09,920
Nitrous you were doing?
2037
01:37:10,290 --> 01:37:12,170
{\an8}It wasn't like any nitrous
I'd ever done before.
2038
01:37:12,250 --> 01:37:13,380
{\an8}It was like Chinese grade.
2039
01:37:13,460 --> 01:37:14,920
{\an8}That shit was not nitrous.
2040
01:37:15,000 --> 01:37:16,250
Yeah, I don't know what it was.
2041
01:37:18,920 --> 01:37:20,500
{\an8}- Is the tattoo done?
- Yeah.
2042
01:37:21,170 --> 01:37:22,170
{\an8}How's it feel?
2043
01:37:22,250 --> 01:37:23,880
{\an8}You know, the very end of it,
2044
01:37:23,960 --> 01:37:25,830
- I felt a little sting.
- Yeah?
2045
01:37:25,920 --> 01:37:27,920
- But like, it feels--
- That was the finger.
2046
01:37:30,170 --> 01:37:31,920
It looks really good, though.
2047
01:37:32,500 --> 01:37:34,080
Go look at it.
Go look in the mirror.
2048
01:37:39,880 --> 01:37:41,290
Stunning.