Ex-Employee Eddie Huang Reveals: Hollywood’s Vice Backers Were Funding Nazi Ideas!

Welcome to a special edition of the Envelope newsletter, your all-inclusive guide to award season. Throughout the opening weekend of the 2024 Toronto International Festival, the entertainment experts at The Times will provide you with interviews, opinions, and analysis from one of the events that traditionally starts the Oscar race. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox.

The day’s most talked-about premieres

Another title from A24, the crowd-favorite romantic comedy-drama “We Live in Time,” may have arrived at Toronto with a lot of pre-event excitement — partly due to a carousel horse gaining viral popularity — but for me, it’s “Heretic,” a horror film featuring romantic comedy star Hugh Grant, that seems most likely to surprise. Here, Grant, who’s publicly expressed his desire to abandon his image as a charming British romantic lead, collaborates with “A Quiet Place” scribes Scott Beck and Bryan Wood for a chilling story of the Sacred — and not so Sacred — Spirit. When Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) show up at Mr. Reed’s (Grant) doorstep to spread the word of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they’re unprepared for their warm welcome… and then find it difficult to leave. The world premiere of “Heretic” on Sunday seems like the ideal start to the spooky season on stage, and a surprising evolution of the rogues Grant has been playing in TV shows like “The Undoing” and “A Very English Scandal.” I’ll definitely be there: just a guy, standing in front of a movie star, asking him to scare me. —Matt Brennan

Other notable world premieres on Sunday include Angelina Jolie’s newest directorial work, “Without Blood”; “Rez Ball,” an uplifting sports drama about a basketball team in Navajo Nation; and “The Assessment,” a sci-fi film about climate change featuring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, and Himesh Patel. View the complete schedule here.

READ MORE: Stevie Van Zandt: Bruce Springsteen’s health is ‘totally back to normal’

An awards contender to keep an eye on

Miley Cyrus, “The Last Showgirl” (original song, “Beautiful That Way”)

“I think I’ve been preparing my whole life for this role,” Pamela Anderson said on stage after the world premiere of “The Last Showgirl” on Friday, a film in which she plays a woman who has been performing the same role for decades and finally has to decide what comes next.

The film is directed by Gia Coppola from a screenplay by Kate Gersten and it’s Anderson’s portrayal of Shelly, a Las Vegas showgirl who finds herself adrift when the show she has been part of for 30 years suddenly closes, that people will be talking about. Anderson, in a tender, vulnerable, and deeply empathetic performance, reveals aspects of herself that have never been seen in a performance before. The supporting cast includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song and Billie Lourd, all of whom deliver performances of great depth.

But there is another star who makes a sort of appearance for the film’s finale. As Shelly starts one last performance adorned in her feathers, glitter, and rhinestones, a smoky ballad plays and a familiar, husky voice is heard. The new original song “Beautiful That Way,” sung by Miley Cyrus, produced by Andrew Wyatt and written by Cyrus, Wyatt and Lykke Zachrisson, plays in the background.

The song embodies much of the film’s spirit, the hard transaction of beauty as a part of one’s professional life and self-esteem, the broken ache of Cyrus’ voice conveying a sense of wounded resilience. The song’s co-writer and producer Andrew Wyatt co-wrote the Oscar-nominated “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie” and won an Academy Award for co-writing “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born.” “The Last Showgirl” is for sale at the festival and among the many things to recommend about it, a savvy distributor could launch a strong campaign for the original song. Who wouldn’t want to see this at the Oscars? —Mark Olsen

WATCH: Pamela Anderson discusses showgirls, Vegas, and her love for acting in ‘The Last Showgirl’

Question & Answer of the day

In “Vice Is Broke,” Eddie Huang chronicles the rise and fall of the youth media company that began as a scrappy complimentary publication in Montreal, became the irreverent guide for Brooklyn hipsters in the 2000s, and was eventually valued at billions of dollars before declaring bankruptcy in 2023. A cautionary tale about co-opting counterculture, the documentary features interviews with key figures in the company’s history — including its controversial co-founder, Gavin McInnes, who was expelled from the magazine in 2008 and later founded the far-right militia, the Proud Boys. (Notably missing is former CEO Shane Smith, who only makes an appearance via angry text messages.) For Huang, the matter is personal: the author, chef, and filmmaker hosted “Huang’s World,” a food program on the Viceland cable network.

Do you remember when you first saw the magazine and what your impressions were?

The first time I encountered it was around 2005 at my friend’s apartment [in the East Village]. We were smoking weed. It’s a thing: You pick up a magazine and you break up the weed on it. I was like, “Wow, this magazine is wild.” At first, I didn’t get it. I came from Orlando, Fla. I was like, “This is a magazine for unruly white guys.” He’s like, “No, it’s like, downtown culture.” It was always in American Apparel. From 2005- 12 it was just like, if you were in New York and you were downtown, you’d end up at those parties.

Why do you think it became so big?

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

What motivated you to make this documentary?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the story of Vice, do you think there was a turning point where the downfall became inevitable?

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

— Meredith Blake

Inside the L.A. Times Studio

SEE MORE: Jennifer Lopez, Jacob Elordi, Tilda Swinton and more visit L.A. Times Studio at TIFF

WATCH: Jennifer Lopez and the crew from “Unstoppable” discuss favorite sports movies

WATCH: Tilda Swinton discusses death with dignity and the joys of working with Pedro Almodóvar

WATCH: Brett Goldstein on soul mates and “discussing” “Ted Lasso’s” fourth season

WATCH: The sounds that drive you mad with the team behind “The Listeners”