Stream It Or Skip It: 'UNTOLD: The Liver King' on Netflix, a documentary look at the hardcore fitness influencer

The self-described “Liver King”, Brian Johnson garnered a massive online following for his superhero physique.

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Where to Stream:Untold: The Liver KingPowered by Reelgood

There’s fitness influencers… and then there’s Brian Johnson. The self-described “Liver King”, Johnson garnered a massive online following for his superhero physique–and his claims to have built it solely on a diet of animal organ meat. Did he mislead people? That’s the focus of UNTOLD: The Liver King, a new documentary feature in Netflix’s sports-adjacent documentary imprint.

The Gist: When you title a documentary after a single guy, you might as well let him take center stage. That’s what happens here, with Johnson speaking directly to the camera, telling his story in his own words, with added contributions from his family and other figures around his life.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I had a moment of deja vu watching Liver King, because despite a passing familiarity with the man’s image and oeuvre, I had not realized that the Liver King’s name was Brian Johnson. And I was like “wait, isn’t that the name of that weird tech CEO guy who’s trying to spend millions of dollars to “live forever”? But I was wrong, that’s Bryan Johnson, who was featured in the recent Netflix documentary Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever. If I had a nickel for every time a guy named Brian/Bryan Johnson became famous for doing absurd things to their body in the name of “health”, well… I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Photo: Netflix

Performance Worth Watching: Have you ever seen those warning plaques for nuclear waste disposal sites, the ones that are supposed to warn curious archaeologists from future societies and say stuff like “this is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… this is a warning about danger”? Yeah, it’s like that. That’s not a criticism of the film itself, but no one in it is getting an award.

Memorable Dialogue: Johnson hams it up (livers it up?) here, smiling for the camera and delivering lines like “why eat vegetables when you can eat testicles?”, occasionally dropping to dour and serious with statements like “if Coke and McDonald’s can harm the human condition and become a mainstream fucking message, well, so can doing some good.”.

(Okay, but have you ever had a drive-through fountain Coke on a hot day? That’s doing good in my book.)

Sex and Skin: Well, Johnson does eat a lot of testicles and penises. Not sure if that counts? He’s also shirtless for most of the movie, but you probably knew that going in.

Photo: Netflix

Our Take: UNTOLD: Liver King doesn’t wait long to get to the pathos. In the first few minutes of runtime, Brian Johnson–the self-described “Liver King”, recalls how his father died when he was a baby, leaving him without “a model of a man, to be able to connect you to what a man is to begin with.” He recalls a childhood of being a “runty little brother”, constantly looking in the mirror and wanting to change. He started going to the gym, and developed an immediate affinity for bodybuilding.

“The first time I ever came in my life was on a bench press,” he recalls with uncomfortable enthusiasm. (Uncomfortable for you, the viewer. He’s quite comfortable with it.)

Johnson was a fitness buff for much of his life, but it was in his two son’s early years that he found his calling. In Johnson and wife Barbara’s description, the boys suffered from a host of childhood ailments. “We’d be in Starbucks and Stryker would stop breathing,” he recalls with alarm. “My kids are dying, and there’s no solution to the problem. Nothing worked.”

Unsatisfied with the solutions doctors were offering, he did his own research, and came across an “ancestral” diet promoted by fitness writer Mark Sisson–one that prioritized an animalistic way of eating raw meats and organs. Barbara recalls throwing out every box in their pantry, leaving behind only “bone brother, liver and meat”, and experiencing an immediate change.

“The diet changed everything–our life and the kids’ lives, right away.”

“That’ll make you fuckin’ believe in something, man,” Brian recalls. “That’s when I decided: holy shit, organs are fuckin’ awesome. I’m gonna start a company.” He began selling supplements derived from animal organs, and in 2017, he took on the moniker that would make him famous: The Liver King. He built an Instagram image with eye-grabbing stunts framed around “nine core tenets” of “ancestral living” – Sleep, Eat, Move, Shield, Connect, Cold, Sun, Struggle and Bond. (Those sound like standard self-help book fodder, but manifest here as wearing animal furs, towing trucks, brandishing guns and blowing stuff up. Oh, and eating liver, of course.) Boosted by influencers like Logan Paul, he parlayed this image into a business empire.

Was it the whole truth, though? Of course not. Johnson is eventually exposed as having engaged in heavy steroid use, proving that his action-figure physique didn’t just come from testicles.

As squirm-inducing as all this can be, it’s hard to deny the charisma that Johnson displays here. He’s a snake oil salesman and a charlatan, for sure, but he’s a magnetic one–and as much as you might want to, it’s hard to look away.

Our Call: STREAM IT (with caveats). Do you use Instagram for peace, calm and normal things? Yes? Then, no, this isn’t for you. Do you use it for finding strange and baffling stuff to gawk at? You do?? Well, friends, have I got a movie for you.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.

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