Anthony Bourdain doc ‘an act of therapy’
NEW YORK — When the filmmaker Morgan Neville began making a documentary on Anthony Bourdain, the late chef and globe-trotting television host, one of the first things he did was comb through every song Bourdain had ever referenced. He came up with a playlist 18 1/2 hours long and called it “Tony.”
Neville, the director of the Fred Rogers portrait “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and the Oscar-winning “20 Feet From Stardom,” was determined to approach Bourdain through a prism other than his death. Music was only a small part of it. But it was a start in making “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” a celebration of Bourdain’s life. Not a forensic inquiry. Not a eulogy.
This was the fall of 2019, when Neville began. Bourdain’s death, in June 2018 by suicide, was still fresh. For many, it still is. “Roadrunner” premiered over the weekend at the Tribeca Festival, days after the three-year anniversary of Bourdain’s death. Just the debut of the film’s trailer prompted an outpouring of emotion — and millions of views within days, a rarity for a documentary — showing how many are still grieving Bourdain’s loss.
“I’ve come to think of the film as an act of therapy for the public,” Neville said in an interview. “I think for people who only know Tony as someone they were a fan of, like me, there was just this giant question mark hanging over his life because of his death. How the [expletive[ could Tony Bourdain kill himself? That is still something people are grappling with.”
“Roadrunner,” which Focus Features will release in theaters July 16, goes about answering that question by filling in a fuller portrait of Bourdain. It gives new insight and context to Bourdain’s end by following the arc of his life — or, more specially, his second life. After years of working as a chef in New York, Bourdain’s book “Kitchen Confidential” catapulted him to fame in middle age. In “Parts Unknown” and other far-flung travel shows that feasted on not just indigenous foods but a wide spectrum of culture, history and shared passions, Bourdain became an unlikely, and unusually authentic, television icon.
When Bourdain was found dead at 61 in his hotel room in Strasbourg, France, it was shocking because few seemed so full of hunger for life, or a greater appreciator of all that’s worth savoring. Neville spent the first months on the film not even dealing with Bourdain’s final chapter. When he did finally turn to it, he found no easy answers.
“The way I came to think of it is: Tony was an ultimate searcher and a seeker,” says Neville. “But if you are really always seeking and always curious, then you can get lost. He had this tattoo that he got late in life that said in Greek ‘I am certain of nothing.’ That sounds very Zen, but it’s also a little sad. If you’re truly certain of nothing and always looking for something, it means you’re leaving everything behind at every moment. “