Gavin McInnes Mans Up

Gavin McInnes is starring in a movie produced by FOX Digital Studio (and that will be available to Netflix subscribers this weekend), playing someone very closely resembling himself (that is, except for the plot device that has his character diagnosed with cancer and on a mission to leave a video legacy for his son). The film, How to Be A Man, is what you'd expect from a founder of Vice: it's satiric, rude -- even offensive -- macho, ironic, ok, irreverent, but most of all fuckin' funny.

From his days do-ing and don't-ing at Vice, McInnes has matured somewhat, if only because he's got a wife and three kids and a need to re-brand. He left Vice over "creative differences"  in 2008, years before the magazine morphed into a media company valued at more than a billion dollars. Now he's the Creative Director at Rooster, an agency he founded. Don't get me wrong, he still revels in asshole-ness whether it's via "How to Fight a Baby" (a video where he seemingly pummels his own kid), as a regular guest on the Hannity show or by getting hit in the head by a flying phone following remarks -- use your imagination -- about women and babies.

On a freezing day in mid-March McInnes is walking to work, talking on his hands-free device for the first time ever. See, even the co-founder of Vice and one-time contender for Gawker's "Hipster of the Decade" award still has something to learn.

"It's colder than a dead slave's eyes out here," he says, his propensity to stir controversy dripping from every metaphor he utters. These days he's somewhat obsessed with the whole "being a man thing." But maybe he always was -- at least he thinks he's no different today from when he was in the band Anal Chinook as a 18 year-old punk rocker.

"I don't think that I've ever changed. I'm still an anarchist punk rocker teenager, still hate the government and do offensive shit. I guess I'm just an offensive person. Maybe it's being Canadian. We always say fuck. We're kind of a low-class people. Hosers are rednecks." I remind him that Canadians have a reputation of always being polite. "Yeah, there's an interesting dichotomy because they do fight and it's dealt with in a song called 'Out for a Rip.' Yes we are polite but we fight a lot."

And that's presumably a good thing because McInnes works both as a comedian and an actor/writer with a focus on what I call "The Crisis of Masculinity" and he calls "The Pussification of Men."

"[Men] need to learn how to fight a bully, how to drink, how to pick up women," he says. Whether this is caused by "women's lib" or "growing up without a dad," he's not sure, but calling attention to the problem is his "mission" and correcting it is his "service to mankind." Give him a second and he'll take 10 minutes to rant about men showering for longer than a minute -- just do your pits, butt and balls and you're done; to wearing flipflops, which should be punished by the force-feeding of said flip flops; to inflective upspeak. All don'ts in his man book. There are four things every man needs to experience, he declares: "Break a heart, have your heart broken, beat the shit out of someone, and have the shit beaten out of you."

Good luck, Gavin. May all your dreams come true.

How to Be A Man is available to subscribers on Netflix starting March 15. You can purchase it on Amazon and XBOX.

(Cover photo courtesy of How to Be A Man)