DANIEL HALPERN: There was always that reserve, and I think I always felt it. I didn’t think he was suicidal. I never saw that side of him. I know there was a lot of self-hate, self-doubt, but I didn’t think he would leave the world in that way. He should’ve been around for another thirty years.
You don’t meet many people like that in your life, who can do what he was able to do, the ways in which he connected and didn’t connect with people. Just being in his presence, as uncomfortable as it often was, was still always very special.
DEAN FERTITA: All I can speculate is, he’s not feeling anything anymore. He was so deeply connected to his feelings, and love, and being able to share that with people, that if that was cut off, it was, “What do I do now?”
That idea of searching: maybe he was tired of searching for what to do. But I never felt like he was hinting at it. Maybe he felt alienated. But there was no amount of alienation that couldn’t be repaired.
KIMBERLY WITHERSPOON: It would have been so interesting to see him age, instead of the choice that he made. Because, eventually, he would have stopped making so much television, and he might have sat at his desk longer.
And it could have been the meatiest [writing] of all, because he was living the life, right? He was living a big life. Whether he wrote another novel or nonfiction book, he would have had the time. And it would have been brilliant to read, because he could have drawn from everything he lived . . . I can imagine so many things he would have done brilliantly, with time.
ALISON MOSSHART: I don’t know if all our detective work is going to figure out exactly what happened. I don’t know if we’re even allowed to know. Or if it’s even our business. I don’t know.
59
“He Was an Extraordinary Witness and Voice for the World”
SANDY ZWEIG: It never occurred to me that we shouldn’t finish the shows, you know? It just felt like we had to. There was so much that was good in those, and so much to put out into the world. We went to CNN, and they were like, “Yeah, sure, you know, if you guys can do it.” And then it was figuring out what we do to fill the holes for the shows that never got shot or didn’t get completed. And then the struggle, obviously, to do it without Tony’s writing.
What was interesting was for the Kenya episode, which is the last one that he had written, he wrote these final thoughts:
Who gets to tell the stories? This is a question asked often. The answer, in this case, for better or for worse, is, “I do.” At least this time out. I do my best. I look. I listen. But in the end, I know: it’s my story, not Kamau’s, not Kenya’s, or Kenyans’. Those stories are yet to be heard.
When he wrote that, both Mo [Fallon, the episode’s director] and I were like, “Oh my god, we can’t use this. It sounds so weird. Like, after this whole show with Kamau, for him to say, ‘This is my show’ seems so strange.”
And then, of course, after he died, it just seemed perfect.
ANDERSON COOPER: It sounds odd to say, but he kind of gave me hope that there was a second and third act in life. I’ve often felt that I’ve been doing this job I’m doing, and this kind of work, for close to thirty years now. I’m fifty-three now. What’s this gonna look like when I’m sixty-three? And I would look at Tony, and think, Wow, he’s doing the best work of his life. There are other ways to tell stories. And look how he’s doing it, look at the life he’s living, and the adventures he’s having, and the work he’s creating, and the impact he’s having. And I always looked at that, and I thought, OK, that’s a path; there is somebody who’s doing something really interesting.
MORGAN FALLON: He was an extraordinary witness and voice for the world. He was an extraordinary television producer. He was a storyteller. He understood the device of film and television better than any of us, and we were lucky that he was powerful enough and willing enough to take risks that we could really push the envelope of what we were doing. For those reasons, and a few others, that will never happen again.
NICK BRIGDEN: There’s not a day that goes by, like, even when I’m editing—you can send it out into the world, and get feedback, but there’s always that hum underneath: “Is this any good?” And that’s always Tony’s voice. He’s become part of my compass.
NIGELLA LAWSON: I’ve experienced living through people’s illness, and then dying, and it takes you a long time afterward to remember them not ill. And when you remember [them] at last as not ill, you feel something’s been given to you. And I find it hard now to think of Tony in a way that isn’t really very focused on the end. I feel the shock has slightly taken the other pictures away.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: He must have hidden so much, and the pain of hiding, or being stuck in a situation that even Tony Bourdain felt he couldn’t get out of—to me that is a profound tragedy.
His loss is really profound, and it really is meaningful, even in our warp-speed society, in which you can barely process and digest one thing that happens, no matter how profound or how simple, [before] something else comes along to distract you. I think that we can’t get over it, and I think we’re not over it yet. And I think the world really misses Tony Bourdain, whether it knows it or not, what he provided, and the places he took us every week on CNN, and before that in his other incarnations. It’s something that’s really missing in our world, particularly if you look at the overwhelming focus, in our media, on just the politics, and on just the person of the president. For many people, it’s an exhausting and partisan and often toxic environment. What Tony delivered was the exact antidote, without being overtly political, but just being about humanity and community and people. It was what we needed, and we don’t have that now.
JEFF ZUCKER: We haven’t been able to, and nor do I think we will be able to, ever replace Tony Bourdain.
AMY ENTELIS: The humanity that he exposed during his storytelling . . . people learn from that and aspire to be as good as he was, which is probably impossible. So many people walk in our door and say—and this was even when he was alive—“I want to be the Tony Bourdain of religion. I want to be the Tony Bourdain of music. I want to be the Tony Bourdain of sports.”
And that just tells you that he invented something, and it resonated with people, to the degree that everybody wants to take what they learned from him and apply it to their singular passion. So, we get a lot of that. We roll our eyes a little bit, but in the end, it’s really a tribute to him, and how he affected people.
LIZZIE FOX: Once a week, at least, I get a pitch for “The Bourdain of———” Once a fucking week. It was laughable in the beginning, but now I get pissed. You don’t have “the Bourdain.” It’s lightning in a bottle. He created an entire genre of TV that people, for years, have been trying to mimic and capture.
MORGAN FALLON: It’s the most ridiculous thing, all the time, I hear people pitching, “It’s the Bourdain of this, it’s the Bourdain of that.” What we did wasn’t a method of television producing; it was a method of television producing with Tony. And without that element, it will never happen again. Everyone needs to get fucking over it and move on. Don’t pitch that shit to me anymore. It’s gone.
ALEX LOWRY: Every call I get for showrunning something, they say, “It’s the Bourdain of”—insert whatever fucking thing here—but you can’t ever have that, because you don’t have Bourdain. Sure, I can give you a travel show where it’s based around medicine, or drinking, or motorcycles, or art, but unless you have that person, you’re just not gonna have “the Bourdain.” He was the essence of the whole thing.
DAVE MCMILLAN: When Tony passed away, we figured out that the internet is different, that Twitter is a shittier place. He had a kind of hold over the restaurant [world], the chefdom, you know? And then after, everybody had this fucking self-confidence to mouth off.
There’s no interest to be on Twitter after Tony. None. It’s useless. It’s just a bunch of barking dogs. Tony was always watching, waiting for opportunities to strike like a cobra. Like, when Tony would come out with a good tweet, it would b
e like, Agh, bodies everywhere. It was amazing, you know? He could drop the hammer and make things right.
JOEL ROSE: One of last meals we had together, we went to Papaya King, the three of us, me, Tony, and Ariane. And that kid is—she’s impressive. I know he loved her.
HELEN CHO: I think it’s important for people to know how much he loved his daughter. She was the world to him. His mistakes, and the terrible choices he made in the last years of his life, do not reflect or equate to the amount of love he had for her. I saw him as a really loving father. I saw him just be really silly, and happily make himself be a fool just for her, just to make her laugh. He’d do anything to make her happy, and was just so proud of her and proud to be her dad. And he’d be so proud of her today.
ARIANE BUSIA-BOURDAIN: I want people to remember my dad as a person who would just open people up to a world outside their apartments, or wherever they’re living, and show them that there’s another side of the world, they might not even know it. And someone who makes people not afraid to explore and adventure into new things, and do new things, and not to be so scared, but to be very open-minded about everything.
It wasn’t until he died that I realized how important he was to some people. I had no clue he was this important or famous or whatever. I didn’t know that he really meant something to some people. People who didn’t even know him sometimes acted like it was a best friend who died. On TV, he kind of acted like he was your best friend, taking you around the world.
With me, of course, he would always try and show me the world around me, by [helping] me experience new foods and new things, telling me about his trips. That’s how I experienced him. And, of course, I would see him on television, and from people’s feedback, I could hear that he inspired them a lot, too.
Acknowledgments
First, my endless gratitude to Tony, who gave me the best opportunities and brought so many people together in love and weirdness and solidarity and tragedy and comedy. I wish that he were still here to bask in all that reflected glory, to borrow one of his favorite turns of phrase.
Thank you to all the people who told me their stories about Tony. And special thanks to Christopher Bourdain, Nancy Bourdain, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, Helen Lang, and Rennik Soholt for sharing their photos.
Thank you to Kimberly Witherspoon and Jessica Mileo at InkWell Management, who keep the world turning forward or, as Kim likes to say, “onward.” And thanks to Daniel Halpern for saying yes, and being right.
Thank you to the excellent publishing team at Ecco, especially Helen Atsma, Sonya Cheuse, Meghan Deans, Gabriella Doob, Ashlyn Edwards, Miriam Parker, Allison Saltzman, and Rachel Sargent, for all their hard work that helps turn an idea into a real live book.
Thank you to advance readers Nathan Thornburgh and Alicia Tobin, whose thoughtful feedback made this book better.
And thank you to my parents, my sister, and my son, for their unwavering presence, love, and support.
Index of Contributors
A specific form of pagination for this digital edition has been developed to match the print edition from which the index was created. If the application you are reading this on supports this feature, the page references noted in this index should align. At this time, however, not all digital devices support this functionality. Therefore, we encourage you to please use your device’s search capabilities to locate a specific entry.
Note: Page numbers in parentheses indicate intermittent references.
Allen, Jeff, (241–43), 291, 292, 294–96, 297, 375–77
Amanpour, Christiane, 87, 268, 270, (279–81), 348, 433
Andrés, José, 83, 155, 205–6, 215, 366, 406
Andrukanis, Jared, 168, 171–72, 211, 237, 323–24, 363, 395–400, 407, 418–19
Aretsky, Beth, (51–53), 91, 92, 120–21, 133–34, 143–44, 146, 148
Ariane. See Busia-Bourdain, Ariane
Aronofsky, Darren, (290–92), 309, 322–23, 357
Barnett, Laurie, 198–99
Bell, W. Kamau, 387–91, 424–25
Bhagat, Mustafa, 125, 306, 346
Bourdain, Christopher, 1–4, 5, 7–8, 9, 10, 11–12, 13, 14–16, 21, 22, 23–24, 29, 31–32, 34–35, 36, 43–44, 45, 100–101, 112, 113–14, 129, 155–56, 247–48, 344–45
Bourdain, Gladys, 1–4, 5–6, 10, 14–16, 17, 21, 35, 45, 47, 71, 99–101, 247–48, 345
Bourdain, Nancy, 8, 9, 13, 18, 21, 22, 23–24, 30, 42, 44–46, 47, 63–64, 86, 89, 99–100, 108, 110, 111–12, 113–14, 115, 120–21, 217, 219, 255, 345, 353–54, 421
Brigden, Nick, 250, 300, 302, 307–8, 325, 395, 405–7, 419, 432–33
Bryan, Scott, 45, 51, 82, 158, 354
Buford, Bill, 82–83, 198, 218, 253–54, 357–58, 365, 421
Busia-Bourdain, Ariane, 148, 152, 163–64, 322, (332–34), 405, 435–36
Busia-Bourdain, Ottavia, 139–41, 141–42, 143, 146–48, 152, 212–13, 330, 334–35, 349, 364–65, 390
Bustillos, Maria, 245, 256–57, 280–81, 368
Chang, Dave, 159, (179–81), 216–17, 341, 364–65, 369, 382, 428
Cho, Helen, 156–58, 228, 230, 252–53, 324, 360, 363–64, 366–67, 413, 435
Choe, David, 219, 253, 327, 381
Choi, Roy, 184–85, 207–8, 218, 230–31, 322, 341
Coleman, Joe, 347–48, 354, 405
Collins, Chris, (106–9), 110, 112, 113, 115, 118, 119–20, 136, 167, 248–49, 259, 260, 366, (371–74), 415, 418
Cooper, Anderson, 94, 216, 220, 227–28, 241–42, 267–68, 420, 432
Elie, Lolis, 189–91
Entelis, Amy, (265–69), (271–74), 275, 280, 338, 434
Epstein, Adam, 159, 199–200, 202–3, 341
Fallon, Morgan, 175–76, 246, 270, 299–300, (302–4), 321, 325–26, 330, 342–43, 407–8, 417, 432, 434
Ferrell, Josh, 172–73, (235–37), 239–40, 242, 324, 415
Fertita, Dean, 160–61, 228, 323, 357, 361, 428
Formosa, Jeff, (8–11), 13, 25, 45, 86, 126, 152–53
Fox, Lizzie, 267, (270–72), 338, 343–44, 395, 434
Freeman, Sally, 172, 174, 238–39, 427–28
Froelich, Paula, 134–35, 136–37, 211, 234, 367–68, 380–81
Getmanov, Alex, 19–21, (26–28), 46–47, 83, 86
Gianopoulos, Panio, 79–81, 84, 94–95, 98–99, 104–5, 107, 111
Gill, Asha, (129–33), 141, 339, 422–23
Goldman, Sam, 8, 9, 13, 22, (24–27), 31, 34, 45, 47, 48, 120, 152–53, 197, 202, 263, 345
Goulding, Matt, (222–26)
Graham, James, (28–31), 33–34, 35, 41
Halpern, Daniel, 83–84, 91, (93–96), 126, 163, 180–81, 183–84, 197–98, 206–7, 337–38, 353, 428
Homme, Josh, 160, 163, 165, 215–16, 218, 229–30, 351, (355–59), 379–80, 408, (420–22)
Jackson, Patti, 50–51, 53, 81, 111
Keefe, Patrick Radden, 40, 100, 249, 254, 255, 272, 284, 286–87, 328–30, 331, 379
Kye, Nari, 167–68, 170, 208–9, 218, 321–22, 297, 328, 347, 348, 357, 367, 419
Lajaunie, Philippe, 66, (75–77), 90, 92, 109–10, 116, 423
Lang, Helen, (17–19), 25, (55–57), 85, 120, 217, 353
Lawson, Nigella, 86–87, 205, (227–29), 234, (249–53), 260–63
Lowry, Alex, 151, 172, 173, 236, 434
Lurie, John, 384–85, 404–5, 424
McFarlane, Bonnie, 185–86, 202, 304–5
McMillan, Dave, 83, 92–93, 159, 160, 203–4, 207, 210, 212–13, 246–47, 346, 366, 421, 423–24, 435
Meehan, Peter, 162, 208, 210, 262, 340
Morin, Fred, 83, 92, 93, 159, 160, 203, 204, 207, (211–13), 246, 346–47, 423
Mosse, Lenny, 28, 30, 31, 38, 46, 47
Mosshart, Alison, 240–41, 296–97, 341, (351–53), 359–60, 367, 369, 380, 383, 409, 425, 429
Opatut, Eileen, 105, 117–18, 215, 267
Ottavia. See Busia-Bourdain, Ottavia
Overmyer, Eric, (189–91)
Petrossian, Shant, 276–77
/> Phan, Natasha, 185
Rezaian, Jason, 187, 210–11, (311–19), 424
Rezaian, Yeganeh, 186–87, 211, (312–17), 319
Rinaldi, Karen, 65–66, 76, 77, (78–79), (80–82), 92, (97–99), 99, 103, 152, 163, 251, 252, 342, 425–26
Ripert, Eric, 87–89, 122, 142–43, 165, 200–201, 230, 289–90, 326
Rose, Joel, 39–41, 42, 49, (75–77), 90, 120, 187–88, 327, 345, 421, 435
Rosenthal, David, 55–57, 63, 64, 73, 77, 85
Ruffino, Mike, 131–32, 141, 161, (208–10), 217, 231, 246, 262, 354, 381–82, 400, 427
Ruhlman, Michael, 88, 89–90, 121–22, 141, 201–2, 338, 342
Schutz, Diane, 144, 229, 233, 303–4
Selkow, Ben, 292–94
Sifton, Sam, 69–70, 281
Simon, David, 188–89, 191, 193–96, (276–78), 368, 369, 384, 409, 420
Snyder, Hillary, 27, 30, 31, 34, 36
Soholt, Rennik, 127, 168, 255–56
Standefer, Robin, (284–87), 341–42, 344
Steed, Michael, 175, 254, 300–301, 330, 395, 400–401, 403–4, (411–14), 416
Stone, Rob, (59–64), 66–67, 68, 73
Stone, Web, (60–64), 67, 68, 73, 136
Tempel, Steven, 50, 51, 66, 121, 145, 217, 234
Tenaglia, Lydia, 107, 108, (111–13), 116, 118–19, 135–36, 148, 259, 260, 337, 353, 361, 366, (371–74), 417–18
Thornburgh, Nathan, 159, 161–62, 219, (221–26), 365–66
Vitale, Tom, 165, (169–71), 177–78, 217, 240, 246, 263, 271, 298, 305–6, 308, 323, 326
Vuolo, Robert, (25–27), (29–32), (34–36), 86
Walsh, Matt, 50, 170–71, 235–36, 308–9, (396–98), 419
Ward, Whitney, 347
Witherspoon, Kimberly, 74–75, 97–98, 247, 249, 339, 340, 351–52, 414, 428–29
Younge, Pat, 123–26, 144–46, 234
Zucker, Jeff, (267–69), 272–73, 275–76, 433
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