Content warning: this piece contains discussions of suicide.
A bad movie can ruin a day. An even worse movie can ruin a week. A really bad movie, however, threatens to tarnish a lifetime. And in its sensationalized, narrow-minded excavation of the late Anthony Bourdain and the enigmatic legacy left in the iconic chef’s wake, Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner does its darndest to diminish all the ways in which Bourdain forever changed our relationship with food, travel, and our next-door neighbors. Indeed, Neville’s film isn’t all that interested in Bourdain’s global escapades, nor his careful conversations with strangers everywhere from Montreal to Mumbai to Medellin. Roadrunner is instead fixated on a single question: Why, at just 61 years old, did Anthony Bourdain — author, cook, television star — hang himself in his room at the Hotel Chambard, just outside Strasbourg, France?
To be clear, Neville’s question is an understandable one. More so than any other tragedy (of which there are far too many), suicide comes with a great deal of uncertainty, second-guessing, and anger. These feelings and more pervade every interview in Roadrunner, suggesting as much — if not more — resentment as there is sorrow in those mourning Bourdain’s death. It’s at once fascinating and excruciating to watch Bourdain’s friends and family process their raw pain, only a few years removed from their loved one’s 2018 passing. Of course, there is an undeniable catharsis in watching such grief play out. It’s an experience we can likely relate to as well. Bourdain was one of those celebrities with whom our parasocial bond seemed particularly strong, likely because, beneath his calm charisma and punk rock demeanor, he seemed just as awkward and agitated as the rest of us. If we are processing pain now in relation to the loss of our dear friend Tony, it is only because, like him, we have suppressed, ignored, and displaced all such pain throughout our lives. That’s not to disregard the complicated emotions of celebrity chef and close friend David Chang, or culinary industry professional and ex-wife Ottavia Busia, although Neville may have been wise to let such fresh wounds heal before attempting to memorialize Bourdain’s life via film. After all, it is only natural to search for the alleged cause of Bourdain’s suicide, especially as the man didn’t even leave a note.
“How does a storyteller check out without leaving a note?” jack-of-all-trades John Lurie wonders aloud late in Roadrunner. Like Neville’s core inquiry, it’s a valid question, worthy of deeper consideration. And yet, Neville treats it with surprising and discomfiting flippancy. These immense questions are nearly impossible to answer in any one case in any one lifetime, yet Neville doesn’t find them difficult at all. Even more troubling: the answers he stumbles upon are ill-fitting, offensive even. I suspect Bourdain would have hated any attempt to convert his complicated existence into a documentary, but he would have really hated Neville’s handling of it, which, in pursuit of Bourdain’s own rock-and-roll attitude, is instead grossly political.
It is here that I must acknowledge a certain irony. Like Chang, Busia, Lurie, and the several others interviewed in Roadrunner (a special shout-out to Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, whose closing song remains the highlight of the film), I am hurting, I am bitter, and I am confused. I grew up an Anthony Bourdain devotee, rushing home after school to watch reruns of No Reservations on the Travel Channel. When I reflect on a life devoid of any immediate artistic influences (love you Mom and Dad, but creativity has never been our family’s forte), Bourdain emerges as one of my life’s greatest inspirations. No matter where he was in the world, Bourdain was always a little nerdy, a little goofy, and a little self-conscious. And yet, despite all that, he was cool. Bourdain emerged onto the mainstream as a rockstar of the restaurant world, and held on to that same identity even as he continually humbled himself to his shifting surroundings. I admired him for his frankness and his vulnerability, even as I could identify with the thick layer of morbid humor hovering above each and every word. Bourdain was never afraid to ask questions, to tread into the grey area, to inspect the underbelly of a supposed utopia. I appreciated his curiosity, and incorporated it into my own life whenever possible. Whenever I travel today, I imagine Bourdain right alongside me. To visit someplace new is to do the “Anthony Bourdain,” to embody the man for whom the planet was both a palace — worthy of endless inquiry and inspection — and a prison, from which Bourdain was perpetually trying to break free.
On a recent trip to the American Southwest, I channeled Bourdain (as well as Homme, who accompanies his late friend during the No Reservations episode set in the region). Dripping with sweat, my shoes filled with sand, I became one with my desert surroundings, no longer skeptical of the “mystical shit” that Bourdain identifies as integral to the High Desert of the United States. Bourdain’s no-nonsense outlook (not to mention his commitment to sarcasm) allowed him to blur the lines between the authentic and the preposterous, and to extend rare compassion to both skeptics and adherents of any one ideology, culture, or lifestyle. As I prepare for my life’s next grand adventure — pursuing a Master’s degree in the United Kingdom — the unknown emerges as the most delicious — as opposed to the most daunting — aspect of my journey. Bourdain’s guiding presence has transformed my relationship with travel, and it absolutely sucks to know my distant mentor is gone. Still, I choose to remember Bourdain, despite his troubles and his flaws, as the source of my desire to create, learn, explore, and eat.
It makes it all the more painful that Neville, tasked with cementing Bourdain’s legacy, largely neglects the culinary icon’s broader cultural impact. Rather than properly engage with his subject’s various passions and pursuits, Neville fixates on Bourdain’s final years, frantically searching for a blameworthy figure in the case of “who” killed Anthony Bourdain. Of course, the very notion of determining culpability in the wake of one’s suicide is not only inappropriate, but also misguided. But Neville is comfortable placing the burden of Bourdain’s death on the star’s ex-girlfriend, Asia Argento, who does not appear in the film. In fact, Neville never even reached out to Argento to interview her for Roadrunner. In an interview with Vulture, Neville justifies his decision as an attempt to avoid the “narrative quicksand” of including Argento’s perspective. “It just became this thing that made me feel like I was sinking into this rabbit hole of she said, they said,” Neville continues. “And it just was not the film I wanted to make.” The director claims that Argento’s inclusion in the film would have ruined the balance of the film, a strange assertion considering how much time he dedicates to Argento anyway. The final third of Roadrunner deals with Argento’s role in her ex-boyfriend’s life, despite never offering the Italian actress a chance to share her own side of the story.
In truth, I’m not particularly interested in defending Argento. The daughter of acclaimed giallo director Dario Argento, she has certainly battled demons of her own throughout her life. As noted in Roadrunner, Bourdain himself was skeptical of Argento’s influence when the couple first got together, theorizing that the relationship could end poorly. Bourdain’s affection for Argento was almost boyish in nature. He’d fawn over her eclectic beauty and her calm demeanor, showering her with compliments at every opportunity. At one point in Roadrunner, a close friend and former crew member of Bourdain’s complains about a time he had to listen to Bourdain praise Argento’s parking skills. But so what? In discussing the relationship between Bourdain and Argento, Roadrunner becomes bizarrely petty, criticizing Bourdain for what is deemed to be his excessive support of the #MeToo movement. Argento, who was raped by Harvey Weinstein in the 1990s, has faced her own accusations of sexual assault from actor Jimmy Bennett. Bourdain allegedly paid Bennett to stay quiet on the matter, as it could have jeopardized Argento’s role as a vanguard of the #MeToo movement. It is a disgusting situation no matter how you slice it, a sobering reminder that nobody is above reproach. But in trying to steer clear of the mess surrounding Argento and her relationship with Bourdain, Neville only draws further attention to it.
Perhaps the most jarring criticism of Argento comes from those involved with Bourdain’s Parts Unknown series on CNN. Neville dedicates a portion of Roadrunner to the series’ “Hong Kong” episode, directed by Argento. The episode, shot by acclaimed cinematographer and longtime Wong Kar-Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle, had been gestating amongst Bourdain and his crew for over six years. When the episode’s intended director had to bail at the last second for an emergency gallbladder surgery, Bourdain tapped Argento — his girlfriend, sure, but an accomplished filmmaker in her own right — to helm “Hong Kong.” It is this point in the show’s history that the crew members interviewed in Roadrunner identify as the show’s breaking point. The episode is characterized as a gross betrayal of all that preceded it, an egregious departure from the formula that came to define both Parts Unknown and No Reservations before it, nevermind the fact that the strongest throughline in Bourdain’s career was his refusal to abide by traditional storytelling conventions.
An avid cinephile, Bourdain always tried to evoke cinema in his work, recreating moments from Apocalypse Now in Vietnam, or Get Carter in London. For “Hong Kong” to mimic Wong Kar-Wai epics like Chungking Express and Fallen Angels delighted Bourdain to no end. The host even offers a rare smile whilst rowing through one of Hong Kong’s many rivers. “I don’t smile a lot on this show, by the way,” Bourdain acknowledges. “But I’m smiling now.” Comments like this one make Neville’s desire to psychoanalyze Bourdain all the more understandable. Amidst the host’s many insights and quips, a deep sadness persists. Perhaps the most profound glimpse into Bourdain’s psyche comes from a conversation between him, Doyle, and filmmaker Jenny Suen in the “Hong Kong” episode of Parts Unknown. Bourdain asks the duo in front of him — who had recently co-directed 2016’s The White Girl — how they feel about the camera as a way of seeing the world. Does perceiving the world through the lens of a camera, Bourdain wonders, maintain the integrity of reality? Should we be comfortable living our lives in front of the camera, or experiencing the far reaches of the world through artifice? These are difficult questions to answer, but they reveal Bourdain’s underlying concerns about his own life’s work, as well as his broader existence, spent almost entirely in front of the watchful eye of a camera. Neville includes a lot of footage from the “Hong Kong” episode of Parts Unknown, but not this moment between Bourdain and the fellow filmmakers. Neville only briefly alludes to the overwhelming nature of living one’s life for the camera, via a frustrated exchange between Bourdain and David Chang wherein Bourdain complains about his cameramen capturing a mostly mundane conversation between friends.
Bourdain’s anger in the moment draws attention to one of the more existential crises of his life, one that threatens to implicate all of us in his death more so than we are willing to admit. And so Neville, unwilling to confront the irony of creating a documentary about a man fed up with a life spent recording, capturing, documenting, stops short of this difficult yet all-too-important conversation. He finds fault in Argento and Argento alone. Hoping to hammer home his criticism of her episode of Parts Unknown, Neville includes an awkward exchange between Bourdain and a pair of Hong Kong refugees. As John — an Iranian refugee — explains the difficult process of seeking asylum in Hong Kong, Bourdain and his crew interrupt John so as to set up a better shot. It’s an unsettling moment, an unfortunate reminder of the often manufactured nature of a show like Parts Unknown. But Neville also incorporates this footage disingenuously. Whereas Neville tries to pass off the footage as some sort of behind-the-scenes scoop, Argento included this moment in the episode. The Parts Unknown crew members interviewed in Roadrunner refer to the moment as an embarrassment for the show, but that doesn’t seem to account for Argento’s full intentions as a director. Indeed, the decision to cut off a moment of vulnerability should strike most of us as odd, but the decision to incorporate that moment into your storytelling is also quite inventive. By owning up to her own directorial behavior, Argento acknowledges the constructed nature of the program. Wong Kar-Wai would be proud.
One could certainly debate the ethics of Argento so brazenly wielding her directorial wand, but Neville’s critique feels both lazy and insincere. Besides, criticizing the work of a fellow filmmaker seems particularly bold for Neville, who has been mired in controversy since Roadrunner’s release. In an interview with the New Yorker, Neville revealed that he created an A.I. model of Bourdain’s voice to read aloud quotes of which there were no existing recordings. One such quote comes from an email Bourdain sent to close friend and artist David Choe, but there are apparently a couple other moments in the film that rely on Neville’s artificial reconstruction. The director’s use of A.I. has stirred strong reactions amongst fans of Bourdain, as well as cinema more broadly. Neville’s decision is undoubtedly unsettling — Bourdain’s wholly authentic voiceovers are largely what made No Reservations and Parts Unknown such a joy to watch — but it is the nonchalance with which he regards the decision that is truly troubling. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later,” he quipped to the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner. Perhaps realizing the error of his ways, Neville clarified in future interviews that he had received permission to recreate his subject’s voice from those close to the man, including ex-wife Busia, who consequently took to Twitter to rebuke Neville’s suggestion. The director then had to clarify his clarification, ultimately admitting that he believed Bourdain would be comfortable with it, and that he didn’t mean to speak for Busia. It’s a messy ordeal that reminds us of the inescapable presence of the director’s hand, often forgotten in the realm of documentary. Even the most reliable of documentary filmmakers are engaging in some form of pretense, but it remains troubling that Neville — one of the more trusted names in documentary filmmaking — hoped to pass off his construction as the truth. Bourdain may have written those words that Neville has him artificially read aloud, and as a fan of film himself, he may have been comfortable with the director’s application of a new technology, but Neville’s indifference to the entire affair, his unwillingness to acknowledge his own manipulations within Roadrunner itself, suggests he was never all that interested in doing right by his subject, but rather in sensationalizing Bourdain’s complicated life story.
Aside from covertly implementing artificial intelligence, Neville similarly incorporates footage from throughout Bourdain’s career without ever placing it in time or space. For a movie about a man who traveled the world, Roadrunner rarely labels where Bourdain is at any given moment, or when in his career a scene is taking place. Nor does the film ever acknowledge the source of Bourdain’s quotes, the email to Choe being the lone exception. As a result, the film is not only disorienting, but dishonest too. Roadrunner ends with Choe defacing a mural of Bourdain as a sort of wicked tribute to his late friend. What if I told you that the mural was not found in the wild, as the documentary suggests, but rather was commissioned by Neville and his producers?
Another sequence late in Roadrunner depicts Bourdain in a therapy session, expressing a surprising degree of vulnerability for the camera. You might ask yourself: how did Neville acquire footage of what seems like a private therapy session? In truth, the sequence is pulled from the “Buenos Aires” episode of Parts Unknown, in which Bourdain indulges in the local standard of attending therapy. With this knowledge, the sequence takes on new meaning. On one hand, Bourdain’s vulnerability, his admission that he just wants “to be happy,” remains authentic and invaluable. But on the other hand, this therapy session was organized and recorded for a TV show. It is this paradox that simultaneously fascinated and tortured Bourdain, but Neville is careful to avoid such a dilemma, for he might be complicit in its painful impact. It certainly doesn’t help that Bourdain’s longtime producers, Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins, appear not just as talking heads in Roadrunner, but as executive producers as well. While their involvement certainly helps to illuminate various details surrounding the early years of Bourdain’s career, their comments later in the film come across as vain attempts to protect their own involvement in No Reservations and Parts Unknown. If their art served to complicate Bourdain’s psyche, Tenaglia and Collins don’t want to know it.
Nevertheless, Roadrunner’s most egregious sin remains the exclusion of Argento from the film, despite her role as one of the film’s most prominent characters. Late in the film, former Parts Unknown director Michael Steed expresses his reluctance to “blame the woman,” but the damage has been done. Neville dedicates a disproportionate amount of Roadrunner to doing exactly that. It seems safe to say that Argento hurt Bourdain. At the very least, we know she cheated on him with a French journalist. But even if such betrayal did play a role in Bourdain’s suicide — Roadrunner does present some compelling albeit circumstantial evidence to support this claim — Neville’s preoccupation with Argento only obscures the larger, more tragic, forces that may have claimed his subject’s life.
In revisiting footage like Bourdain’s therapy visit in Buenos Aires, or his vulnerable exchange with Doyle and Suen in Hong Kong, one begins to understand how instrumental Bourdain’s personal struggles were to his artistic identity. He wanted to broach difficult topics. He wanted to confront his own demons. But he also wanted to do so away from the omnipresent eye of the camera, an opportunity he was rarely afforded. Having these kinds of conversations about Bourdain feels strange in that he would likely want us all to shut up, but only because it made him uncomfortable. Deep down, he wanted to be seen and heard and helped more than a television show could have ever allowed for. In this sense, he might have appreciated the brutal honesty of Roadrunner, just not the myopic lens through which the film tries to achieve it. Reckoning with Bourdain’s death requires us to examine ourselves, and consider our own relationship with him and the countless other celebrities we engage with on a daily basis. In watching episodes of No Reservations or Parts Unknown, in reading books like Kitchen Confidential or Medium Raw, are we recognizing Bourdain as a full-fledged human being? Or is he, like the art and food he creates, just more content for us to chew on and swallow? The very act of writing this piece (or reading it) may run counter to these concerns. Like Neville, we remain concerned with Bourdain as a public figure first and foremost, whose life and whose story is ours to recount, unpack, and dissect. But this relationship — emblematic of celebrity culture at large — confirms our own culpability in the tragedy surrounding Anthony Bourdain. Indeed, it is a separate tragedy unto itself. And sadly, it is one neither Morgan Neville, nor many of us, are ready to confront quite yet.
