MICHAEL STEED, DIRECTOR: In 2009, I was working on this show called The First 48, which is a murder cop show, hanging out with homicide cops; then I was hired to do two special episodes of No Reservations. Me and one shooter would meet Tony in a city, shoot one scene with him. We did that for maybe eight locations, and then made an episode called “Heartland.”
My very first impression of Tony? He didn’t look me in the eye, and he had a limp handshake. I think he was just uninterested, or just kind of shy, and wondering, Who is this person? Is he going to be part of the gang?
I mean, what did he have to say to me? He probably had twenty things on his mind. Once you’d established with Tony that you could back your ideas up, then you were pretty good. I brought stuff to the table, and I think he picked up on that, because at a certain point [executive producer] Lydia [Tenaglia] said, “So I talked to Tony the other day, and he’s like, ‘The fucking new guy’s all right.’”
I wasn’t real chatty-chatty with him. I was always directing Tony. Always. I always saw Tony as a muse of sorts.
I think we agreed on a lot of aesthetics, and I liked fucking with him. I would defend John Hughes purposefully, or if they got too filmy at their dinner discussions, I would bring up Meatballs Part II or something stupid, and talk about it seriously. Or I’d bring up Steely Dan.
Tony never asked about me. Never. And I didn’t judge him for that. I just took note of that. I loved the man, I respected him, and I loved working with him. He made a lot of fucking money. We worked our asses off for him. Local crews liked us; we got shit done.
MORGAN FALLON, CINEMATOGRAPHER-DIRECTOR: Someone had dropped out from a No Reservations episode in 2008. I got called to go, because I was on a list. It was a quick turnaround; I think it was a week, and then I arrived in Egypt and met Tony.
I remember the first night, and almost immediately getting cut down by him, on some piece of misinformation that I’d tried to add to his story regarding the narcotics trade in Southeast Asia, and I was like, Well, that didn’t go well.
He didn’t talk to me for the next few days, and then we had to drive out in the western desert, and I said, “Oh, I’ll get on the roof, and we’ll shoot car to car.”
I get up on the car, and these cats proceed to go across the desert at like eighty miles per hour. I was clinging for my life to this four-poster bed that, for some reason, they had on the roof of their car. And when we stopped, I had this huge hematoma on my arm, where I had been hanging on to that bed. I think that act—well, first of all, it’s stupid, and I would not recommend that any camera operator do something so dumb and cavalier—but I think that Tony respected those kind of things, the willingness to take physical risks, create risks, the desire to be out there on the edge and have experiences.
I got an email from Chris and Lydia that said, “He knows your name, and seems to like you, and we have another show coming up.” And it was ten years, from that point forward, that I worked with Tony.
SANDY ZWEIG, SERIES PRODUCER, NO RESERVATIONS AND PARTS UNKNOWN: Lydia got in touch with me about No Reservations. It was in late 2010. At the time, Tony was in the field, so I didn’t meet him before being hired. The first time I met him was at a voice-over session, and it was very funny, because Chris [Collins] said, “When you meet Tony, he may not look you in the eye, he may not look at you at all. Don’t take it personally. He’s a little socially awkward.”
I said, “I’m socially awkward, too, so it’s totally fine.” I went into the session, sat in, and I met him, talked to him, and he looked me in the eye.
At the point I came in, I think Tony, he wasn’t quite over Travel Channel, but was getting to that point. One of the shows that was in edit was the Haiti episode; Tom Vitale was editing it. The first set of notes that we got back from the network, there was a beautiful sequence, obviously a gorgeous sequence, and they were like, “Well, we’re not really sure about this. This could be cut down.”
TOM VITALE: For No Reservations, Haiti, we went there shortly after the 2010 earthquake, and Tony had really been dying to stretch his legs, tell different stories. Haiti was quite an intense environment. Being there after the earthquake, it had a postapocalyptic vibe, and of course, there was a hurricane heading toward us. But Tony was inspired by getting to flex some different storytelling muscles.
Having traveled as much as he did, Tony could be a bit jaded, even if he was seeing something amazing, so the times I remember him being really excited were usually the most intense locations. Haiti would be a good example of that. It was certainly one of the more dangerous and unstable places we’d been to at that point. Seeing that kind of suffering takes an emotional toll, so I’m not saying Tony was having a good time, but he was very engaged, which was contagious.
Travel Channel wasn’t particularly happy with what we delivered. In addition to Haiti being a different kind of location, we didn’t do it in a typical travel show format. Instead, it was all about atmosphere and texture. We got some pretty hilarious notes like, “Are there any parts of Haiti that are touristy?”
Worst of all, the network wanted a traditional sum-up at the end. Tony, very passionately and eloquently, argued that the entire point of the show was that there was no answer. No neat, tidy sum-up to the situation in Haiti. That was a bitter pill for the network to swallow.
SANDY ZWEIG: I emailed Haiti notes to Tony, and said, “Here are my thoughts on these notes. They want us to cut this thing. We’re obviously not going to do that.” And then he sent back just one line: “It’s a pleasure working with you.”
TOM VITALE: Ultimately, Tony prevailed and they didn’t gut the episode.
SANDY ZWEIG: That really established our relationship, which was, I felt, like one of mutual respect. He would not always agree with me, and there were often colorful emails as well—like, “I need a sharp object to stick in my eyes, because this cut is making me hate myself so much,” those sort of things—but I always felt, ultimately, we could have an honest exchange.
He was very decisive. He stood by what he believed in, you know? He was smart. He knew who he was. He knew what he wanted from the show. And he delivered. I wasn’t always in 100 percent agreement with him creatively, but it was clear that he had a vision for it, and that vision reflected who he was.
And that is so not the case with most people on television.
As hard as he was, sometimes, to work with—and he could be difficult, demanding—it elevated all of us to do better. He was not a perfect person, he could be an asshole sometimes, but I’ve dealt with people who were far less talented, and far more high maintenance.
26
“You See a Person Who’s Come Full Circle, and He’s Seen the World”
Medium Raw
DAVE CHANG: There was a whirlwind of Bourdain around these years in my early thirties. I think Tony took a shine to me because he saw a lot of me in him, and I idolized him. Some of the best moments of my life were with that guy. The best hang. Man, drinking, smoking—Tony was the fucking best. There was a five-year stretch where more often than not, Tony was going to be there and we were just hanging out a lot, and getting blind drunk together, and smoking so many cigarettes. Almost all our conversations were based on happiness, and the elusiveness of it.
The first time I did TV with Tony was at Ssäm Bar, for the [No Reservations] “Food Porn” episode, and then we did Queens, and then we did the overnight at PDT [bar in Manhattan]. I saw him in Australia and a few other places. San Sebastián [Spain] . . .
It was Gastronomika [an annual culinary conference], and we were filming, so it was probably 2010. We had dinner at Elkano.
It was me, Daniel Boulud, every chef who was at the conference, Tony was there, and it was packed. And Tony and I were like, We don’t want to go to this fucking dinner. They make you go to all these dinner junkets, and we’re drinking these giant gin and tonics trying to get out of it, but we couldn’t, and I was like, Fuck, if Tony has to go, then I definitely have to go to this fuc
king thing.
I do think it was the best dinner I’ve ever had in my life. Grilled turbot. Elkano has a special place in my heart to this day. Everything we ate—and I remember we were drunk—but we were just eating it with our hands, and the whole thing was magic. It was like amazing cheese, and lobsters, and everything you would want to eat at that moment in time. I remember looking around the room, at Tony, looking at Daniel—there was just utter fucking joy. Perfect lighting, and I remember saying, “Even the most jaded, cynical motherfucker can be knocked on their ass,” and at the time I didn’t think there was anyone more jaded and cynical than Tony. And he said, too, “This is the best meal.”
DANIEL HALPERN: I loved Medium Raw, which was a follow-up to Kitchen Confidential; I think it was written in the same way. These chapters, he wrote them and sent them to me. They weren’t in any order. I just edited the manuscripts and put them into an order, and we talked about that order.
He wanted to call the book Medium Rare; I suggested Medium Raw. It didn’t do quite as well as Kitchen Confidential. Nothing would. That book is one of the iconic memoirs of the last fifty years, really. There’s just nothing like it. Medium Raw is the closest thing to it. Medium Raw did well. But it’s not Kitchen Confidential. There’s just one.
DAVE CHANG: Probably the best thing he’s ever written in his life is the chapter about Thomas Keller and his meal at Per Se, in Medium Raw. Because if you mirror that with his earlier writings about Thomas Keller, you see a person who’s come full circle, and he’s seen the world, and he’s no longer impressed. I thought it was some of the most beautiful prose he’s ever written. I was like, Shit, where does a guy go from here? Food’s dead to him. There’s only so many bowls of soup. Even going to Southeast Asia, I think, hurt him, because it was no longer the place he fell in love with, because it had become developed and urbanized.
When he first started to travel [on TV], he’s basically just this fucking bro, and all that travel made him worldly and wise. I think he saw that things are relatively meaningless. I think the travel was him running away—every new culture, every new TV project, was to fill the heroin void, so everything had to become more difficult, more extreme, more challenging, and you could see that throughout his entire television career, and the more he traveled, the more he saw the pain and suffering of it all. It gave him deep, deep humanity, but I think it fucked him up even more.
27
“I Knew I Could Write the Story I Needed to Write”
Tony as Publisher, Graphic Novelist, and Screenwriter
In 2011, Tony established Anthony Bourdain Books, a publishing imprint within Ecco, his longtime publisher, which is itself an imprint of HarperCollins.
DANIEL HALPERN: He said, “I’ve always wanted to be a publisher. I would love to be a publisher,” so we made the deal.
We never had any conflicts over his writing. We had conflicts, when he was publishing books, over books that he would like, that I thought we wouldn’t be able to sell. But they weren’t fights. We never got to that place, ever. We did a lot of the books that he wanted. I wish he had been able to do more. He wanted to do a reprint of Ashenden, or The British Agent, a collection of W. Somerset Maugham stories that he loved, and we tried to get the rights, but it was still in copyright.
I think he just loved having access to a publishing house, and could say to people, “You have a book?” He would meet people and get excited about them, and sometimes there would be a book, sometimes not. He brought in [comedian] Bonnie MacFarlane, Roy Choi, José Andrés.
ROY CHOI, TV AND PUBLISHING COLLABORATOR: The first time I met Tony was for The Layover, the Los Angeles episode. It was at Ham Ji Park restaurant, in K-Town. Tony came in and sat down with the camera already rolling. We were already five minutes into the conversation before I asked when the shoot would start.*
I was just about to pitch my book, and I asked him if he had any advice for me. That’s when I first saw the compassionate and tender side of Tony, and that’s the Tony that I grew to know, who always showed up on time, returned your email within five minutes, always gave you a hundred suggestions, pointed you in the right direction, and that happened that first night, when I barely knew him.
I don’t think he had the publishing company fully ready yet, but now that I look back, he was telling me that he had a publishing company without really telling me, because I don’t think it was official yet, and the next time I hit him up, he said, “You need to come with me.” He introduced me to Dan Halpern, and Dan said, “You want to make a pretty book? Make a fucking pretty book with another publisher. You want to make a real book? Come over here.” And Tony echoed that.
It all felt right. I knew I could write the story I needed to write with Tony. I didn’t know how involved he would be, and then a lot of anxiety started popping up, like, Oh, now Tony’s my boss; what’s that relationship gonna be like, and what if I don’t agree with him? How am I gonna fight with Tony?
Tony never really gave line edit notes or anything. He would just basically say, “Fuck, yeah, keep it fucking going!” But he would read every single chapter, and he’d say, “I want to learn more about this,” or “Why are you dancing around that?”
NATASHA PHAN, ROY’S BUSINESS PARTNER AND COAUTHOR: We knew we could take risks with Tony. Everything we did was the antithesis of cookbooks. It was a memoir and a cookbook, and we wanted Bobby Fisher to photograph it, which at that time was a completely different style. He let us use our own organic way of knowing how to put a book together.
ROY CHOI: I remember when we announced the book, we were in South Beach, at the Raleigh. He loved that hotel. I met him there and we talked by the pool; it felt very Godfather-like. He was swimming with his family, and he got out of the pool and sat with me and talked, and then he got back in the pool.
BONNIE MCFARLANE, COMIC, WRITER: Someone asked if I would do a roast of Anthony Bourdain, for the New York Food and Wine Festival in 2012. I had to do a lot of research to make jokes about him, and he did seem like a really great guy, so I decided, I’m not gonna do too many jokes about him; I’m gonna make fun of everyone else on the dais.
I guess he liked what I did, because he and his agent asked me to meet them for lunch a couple of weeks later, and during that lunch he said, “I want you to write a book. I want you to write about your life.”
It was really an incredibly easy process. He just read all the chapters, and would, every once in a while, send me a message to say, “I love the book. I love what you’re doing,” and that was it.
That was the way it was writing for his stage show, too. He would ask me for jokes, send me a list of topics that he needed, and I would write, you know, one hundred jokes for him, and he would send me a check and say, “Thank you.” There was no negative feedback, ever, from him.
At that lunch, he did say to me that he had never heard a woman who could do that before, meaning, to roast him. He said, “I’ve never heard a woman with that voice before.” I wanted to say, “Well, I’m not like that all the time,” but I didn’t want to lose his respect, so I was a little bit mean to him every time I saw him. He loved it. Once he was on board with me he was completely supportive, 100 percent.
He made a video when my book was published and said, “This is why I have a book imprint, to publish Bonnie McFarlane.”* It was over the top, but that’s the thing about him, is that he still comes across as genuine. I was nervous around him, because I didn’t want that approval to go away. I have a little bit of an issue with saying things I really shouldn’t say, and doing things I really shouldn’t do, and I never got to know him really well, because I was scared of severing that mutual respect.
YEGANEH REZAIAN, JOURNALIST: Tony was really supportive of the idea of a book. I think Jason started writing it the very first night he got released from prison, and they took us from Iran to Switzerland and Germany.* So he was always writing. The first thing he asked for was a pen and paper.
JASON REZAIAN, JOURNALIST: [Literary
agent] Kim [Witherspoon] and I spent a ton of time on the phone, developing this idea for a [book] proposal. That process is not easy in the best of times, but when you’re just out of a year and a half in a foreign prison, it’s even more complicated. We took it to twelve or thirteen different publishers, and Tony was really adamant about wanting to read the proposal. We got seven offers, including one from Tony’s imprint.
I got an email from Tony—he was in Laos—and it was like, “I’m gonna be a vociferous supporter of you and [Jason’s wife] Yegi no matter what you do, but give me some serious consideration.”
Yegi and I were going to some event, sitting in the back of an Uber, when this email came in, and I read it to her, and she said, “Jason, were you even considering going with anybody else?”
So that started this journey with Tony, writing my story. He wasn’t reading my pages or anything like that. I don’t know how much of the manuscript that he actually read. All I know is that Dan and Zack Wagman, my editor at Ecco, they wrote to me the day before Tony died, and said, “We’re accepting your manuscript.” Everything was starting to really come together.
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