SPIKE JONZE: (SINGING) A salaam aleikum.
A salaam aleikum.
[FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
Should we interview Shane Smith more?
SHANE SMITH: Here?
SPIKE JONZE: Yeah, right here.
SHANE SMITH: OK.
SPIKE JONZE: You know, I always think that a lot of
what "Vice" has done has happened because of your sheer
will of it.
You've willed it to be through your force of life.
And--
SHANE SMITH: Yeah, I think that too.
[LAUGHTER]
SPIKE JONZE: You know, it's part having a vision, part PT
Barnum hyping it, and sort of willing everyone to
go along with you.
SHANE SMITH: Yeah, when you're starting out, you have to
definitely be louder noise than the other guys.
SPIKE JONZE: You freak me out.
SHANE SMITH: No, I'm the only one that
doesn't freak you out.
See, you've forgotten.
SPIKE JONZE: Oh, that's right.
You don't freak me out anymore.
SHANE SMITH: I used to freak you out?
SPIKE JONZE: No.
SHANE SMITH: See, I could interview you.
So how did I freak you out?
SPIKE JONZE: I would say you never freaked me out, but I
would say you've calmed down a lot since I've known you in
the last eight years.
You're calmer.
SHANE SMITH: I was too--
SPIKE JONZE: You had, like, this gusto, which both made
everything happen, but also sometimes--
here's where you freaked me out.
It's because whenever you'd tell me what was going on,
you'd be like people are freaking out
over what we're doing.
We just put the new issue, and people are freaking out.
We're starting a new magazine in Croatia.
People are freaking out.
We just wrote this script and people are freaking out.
And like, everything was on 10.
People were freaking out about everything.
And this was like eight years ago.
So, you know, you were a younger man.
SHANE SMITH: Yeah, well know, I probably had to sell it a
lot more because we weren't as established.
So I had to be, like, always, like, pumping it, pumping it.
And for sure, you're right.
So I was probably selling Vice with my head nod.
People are freaking out!
Spike!
SPIKE JONZE: How do you think you've mellowed out in the
last 8 or 10 years?
SHANE SMITH: You know, the truth of it is, I always
thought I was going to die because, when I was young, I
was in kind of a quasi gang.
There was 12 of us.
And then by the time I was 18, nine had died.
So I would just get wasted, and get into fights, and
screw, and smash things, and--
I didn't care.
And I would always be like, we have to do it now, and
fucking let's go!
Because I didn't there would be a lot of time.
So I think that when you realize--
I realized my mortality was a good thing.
Because I'm like, first of all, I'm going to be around
for a few years, hopefully.
And we can take our time.
We can enjoy it.
And I didn't have to drink every day.
I didn't have to eat five steaks everyday, although you
wouldn't know it.
I don't have to coke all night.
I don't have to fuck 20 women.
And when that sort of switched, then
you're like, OK, now.
Now what do I really want to do?
So I want to work.
I want to put my indelible mark on the cultural fabric
because I'm an egotist still.
I don't want to just be a guy know for business or making
"Vice." I want to write books, and make films,
and make the biggest--
I want to be like Tom Freston and you, rolled into one.
I want to do a lot of stuff.
But I want to do it my way and be happy.
And also enjoy traveling to places like this, which is the
most beautiful place on Earth, and crying.
SPIKE JONZE: And crying?
SHANE SMITH: Yeah.
SPIKE JONZE: Come here, let's cry.
Come cry with me.
It's OK.
SHANE SMITH: See, [INAUDIBLE]
that's a good interview.
You're getting up there.
That's--
SPIKE JONZE: We're getting there, we're not they're yet.
We're not there yet.
MALE SPEAKER: No one has shit their pants.
SPIKE JONZE: Yeah, then we're there.
Ah, yes.
Woo.
So Shane, so this game goes, I give you a subject, and you
give me something profound, and quick, and mindblowing.
And if I don't like it, I cut your neck off.
SHANE SMITH: OK.
SPIKE JONZE: OK.
How about, tell me about self-doubt.
SHANE SMITH: Oof.
I think my hyperbole was a blanket again self-doubt.
I think everybody has self-doubt.
And you mask it in different ways.
Tattoos hide self-doubt.
Muscles hides the self-doubt.
Fashion hides self-doubt.
We put on outfits and personas to mask our self-doubt.
And for me, I had to push it to the back of my
sub-consciousness because failure couldn't be an option.
Uh-oh, there it goes.
SPIKE JONZE: This is the effect he's had on
[INAUDIBLE].
SHANE SMITH: I'm so scintillating.
SPIKE JONZE: So drugs.
SHANE SMITH: Drugs.
Drugs, look, I think that the whole world is drugged on one
thing or another.
SPIKE JONZE: What drugs were you ever addicted to?
SHANE SMITH: So cigarettes.
Cigarettes was the hardest thing I ever had to quit.
They're insidious.
Alcohol, there's a quote from Napoleon which is a conquest
has made me, and conquest must sustain me.
And so I used to say, alcohol has made, and alcohol must
sustain me.
Because everything I did, my hilarity, my lunacy, all the
stories, all the crazy things I did was all just
booze-fueled.
SPIKE JONZE: Did you go through a period where you had
to be the Shane Smith character?
SPIKE JONZE: Correct, yes.
Describe that Shane Smith character.
SHANE SMITH: Sort of the poor man's Hemingway, sort of bon
vivant storyteller drunk.
Let's have 14 bottles of wine at dinner, roast suckling pig,
and a story about chopping off a dude's head in
the desert or something.
Like, adventurer.
I was never really addicted to anything except for
cigarettes and booze.
And I probably did too much cocaine for a
little period of time.
SPIKE JONZE: Yeah, you did, a lot.
SHANE SMITH: How do you know?
SPIKE JONZE: Because I remember seeing you.
SHANE SMITH: I used to do coke off knives.
SPIKE JONZE: Off [INAUDIBLE]?
SHANE SMITH: Off knives, yeah, any kind of knife
SPIKE JONZE: This is--
SHANE SMITH: Whoa, don't-- fuck.
No, no, no, no, no.
That's not a fun game.
[INAUDIBLE]
We're going to put this back in the area where it's
supposed to go.
SPIKE JONZE: OK, good job with the sound bites.
SHANE SMITH: Oh, thanks.
Again
SPIKE JONZE: What do you think, like, how she we end
this thing?
SHANE SMITH: We should go swimming and end it as
the sun goes down.
SPIKE JONZE: OK, that sounds good.
Making love on the beach?
SHANE SMITH: Yeah.
SPIKE JONZE: OK, got it.
Oh, wow let's go down there.
(SINGING) A salaam aleikum.
A salaam aleikum.
What does it say?