In the long, storied history of TV hosts, Anthony Bourdain is an iconic figure, as he basically redefined the idea of what a celebrity chef could be and what a travel series should look and sound like. Of course, that all came to a tragic end in 2018, after Bourdain died by suicide. And in this episode of The Playlist Podcast, Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville talks about the legacy of Anthony Bourdain as we discuss his latest documentary, “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.”
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain’ Excels With A Zest For Living [Tribeca Review]
As the title implies, “Roadrunner” is an exploration of the life and tragic death of chef-turned-TV star, Anthony Bourdain. The film covers his rise as a chef with a best-selling book to his transformation into a TV personality that traveled the world and gained an immensely large number of adoring fans. The documentary also dives into Bourdain’s eventual death which was a shock to everyone in his life including his family, friends, and fans.
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If you’re a fan of Neville’s previous work, including the Oscar-winning film, “20 Feet from Stardom,” you know the filmmaker is primarily known for his music-based documentaries. And even though ‘Roadrunner’ is a film about a chef and TV host, that musical background helped the director figure out a way into the mind of Anthony Bourdain.
“I’m a musician and I’ve made music films, and so, it’s a way for me to get a window into somebody’s taste and energy and everything else,” Neville said. “With [‘Roadrunner’], I put together a playlist that is almost 19 hours long of every song that [Bourdain] mentioned anywhere…and then I shared it with everyone working on the film. Pretty much all the songs in the film come from that playlist.”
Of course, you can’t talk about Anthony Bourdain in a documentary without diving into his suicide. Neville knows that not everyone is going to be pleased with how much the film discusses the tragic death, whether it be too little or too much. However, at the end of the day, the director included everything he thought was relevant to the story.
“Honestly, I think it’s kind of a no-win situation for me as a filmmaker,” he said. “People are like, ‘You went way too much into it,’ or ‘You didn’t go far enough.’ I’ve heard everything. All I can do is say that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it and looked at all the evidence and heard all the voices and I just tried to reflect what I felt about it, which was there are all kinds of contributing factors, particularly his state of mind over the last year and him becoming more emotionally unstable. And there’s no tidy answer as to why he would do it other than he made a bad decision in the spur of the moment one time and it was irreversible…I think it was literally a momentary lapse in judgment.”
“Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” arrives in theaters on July 16. You can hear the full discussion below:
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