by Tom Vitale
I heard a sound sort of like glass breaking when Tony said that. It was all in my head, of course, but something inside me had just snapped. It wasn’t just the Congo and the chicken or even the stress of the first couple shoots for CNN. A flood of stress and resentment and a bunch of other feelings, some of which had nothing to do with the job, things I’d bottled up since—well, forever—were all hitting me at the same time. I decided it might be prudent to take a temporary leave of absence. Yes. Best I step back and let nature take its course, maybe even enjoy the show.
By this time, a nearly apoplectic Chef Tony had resorted to yanking out spines and guts with bare hands, the entrails wrapping around his arms as he attempted to toss them overboard. “Shit! I busted a gizzard,” he cussed. “Can I please get the motherfucking pot?” The lights, now flashing on and off like in a horror movie, revealed everyone running around in a full-on panic. Dez, Stew, and Warren were still desperately working on the electricity issue, assisted by Jerry, who was rushing back and forth between the scene and the generator when he whacked his head into the low beam of death for the second, then third time. Dan was drinking scotch and trying to light the charcoal cooker. Horeb was tearing apart the stores looking for Tony’s missing pot. Moose was searching for backup batteries when he stepped through a broken floorboard and twisted his ankle. Tony was waving his knife, yelling, “Will one of you useless puddles of reptile vomit open the fucking wine?!” I was watching the escalating dumpster fire while hiding behind Mo for protection. Each time the bulbs flickered back on, I could see we were attracting an increasingly large swarm of every manner of jungle insect. “Where are the tomatoes?!” Tony shouted frantically while swatting at the Oldsmobile-sized moths fluttering around his head. “Dude! Don’t do that!” Dan warned. “There’s poison on the wings. If you crush one, your whole face will swell up like a casaba melon!” Mo was recording everything, and when it occurred to me this was perhaps the most surreal stand-and-stir ever filmed, certainly the most bizarre for CNN, I almost laughed. Almost.
“We’ve got the genny sorted,” Dez called over the walkie. “Power situation is right as rain.” At which point the lights cut out again. When they blinked back on, Dan was standing in front of me pouring a big red plastic Solo cup full of Johnnie Walker.
“We don’t have a corkscrew,” he said, taking a shot.
“What is the condition of the onions?” Tony barked, wiping sweat from his brow. “If they scorch for even thirty seconds in that thin-ass horrid North Korean–made pot, the acrid flavor will permeate the entire batch!”
Glancing over at the smoldering onions and embers coming from the fire—fanned as it was by the movement of the boat—I realized we’d been charging ahead at full speed in complete darkness and shouted, “Shit! Why is the boat still moving?!”
Our lives, the captain, and his ship had all been in jeopardy because nobody had given the order to drop anchor. It was sort of ridiculous, I’d been too busy playing with the camera, manufacturing drama with some chickens, to pay attention to the real danger.
As we slowed and drew close to the shore, Mo pivoted around to get a shot of the captain shining a searchlight along the shore. “Is he looking for crocs?” Mo asked.
“I think most of them have been eaten,” Dez responded. “He’s gonna swim in now to tie up the boat.”
I held my breath while the captain jumped into the dark, potentially alligator- and snake-infested water. Fortunately, nothing ate him.
Now that we were stopped, the breeze was gone, and it got hotter and even buggier. Like insanely buggier. Despite spraying clouds of DDT, we were all getting eaten alive but afraid to swat anything away because of the poisonous moths. Several hours later, dinner was finally ready. The prospect of eating was less than appetizing for a myriad of reasons, but at least the mood seemed to lighten a bit as everyone sat down around the table.
“Tom, I want you to fold the dinner napkins into origami swans,” Tony said. “And why is there no decorative centerpiece on the table?”
“That’s a little colonialist of you,” Dan said, chasing his coq au vin with a glass of scotch.
“Listen, this is a tough environment,” Tony shot back. “You gotta keep things organized, keep things clean, have a plan. Prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance. Also dying.”
While attempting to choke down a zinc-flavored onion, my mind drifted toward Kurtz. Maybe there’d been a method to the madness all along? Was Tony’s point that—as in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now—deep in the jungle everyone goes a little bit crazy? That we all have a Kurtz somewhere within us? We’d arrived in the Congo with good intentions, and ended up doing something as vulgar as playing with our food in a country of starving people… on TV.
Later, lying in bed counting the holes in my mosquito net, I found myself again wondering why and how I’d ended up in a place like the Congo. My method for coping was the same it had always been: focus on the objective. By looking through the camera or immersing myself in the success of the operation, I could almost trick myself into believing what I was seeing was on TV instead of real, blurring the lines between reality and how it was all going to play out in the edit. The camera functioned as both a protective agent and survival strategy… but in the process it could make me lose perspective—and empathy. The people we filmed, the things we saw, my own health and safety only had value in the context of the show. Ultimately, I’d been willing to do whatever it took to make sure Tony’s experience lived up to his grand narrative, regardless of the cost.
Despite everything the Congolese had been through, Horeb and so many others worked incredibly hard for what they believed in, and here I was just playing some stupid game with a camera. We’d go home with the footage, and I’d probably find a way to fix it in the edit with Tony’s voice-over. It was easier not to think too hard about how our new friends would be staying behind in their country and continue fighting just to survive.
TWO DAYS LATER, WE WERE at the end of the shoot, hot, dirty, and exhausted, stopped dead in our tracks during another series of protracted negotiations. This time the operators of a large metal auto barge were refusing to take us across the water until they received “back pay.” After two hours, the situation didn’t seem to be progressing. I stepped away to find somewhere to take a piss. Alone in the dense underbrush, I heard a rustling. I spun around expecting to see Tony with a rubber snake; instead I was confronted by a soldier, AK-47 over his shoulder. He looked like a teenager, and his eyes were as red as his beret. He stood there staring at me while tracing a finger along the trigger of his gun. His blissed-out state of mind reminded me of college when my friend Waz got so fucked up he genuinely believed he was a daisy. But as the soldier kept his unnerving grin trained on me, I couldn’t imagine this kid’s delusions having anything to do with flowers. I took a deep breath and smiled while backing away. “Keep calm, panic breeds panic,” I repeated to myself. When I got back to the group, I instructed Moose to pay the ferry operators whatever they wanted; it was time to go home.
Like many travelers who find themselves in a moral inferno, we’d begun in search of Tony’s childhood heart of darkness adventure fantasy. What we’d found was something different… Maybe Tony could still say something that would justify why we’d risked life, limb, and sanity to go to the middle of the freakin’ Congo. I needed to know if it meant something to Tony. That I wasn’t disposable. I wanted to know if it had all been worth it. Or even if he thought it hadn’t.
Fortunately, the Travel Minute—a network promo where Tony sums up his visit—often served the unintended purpose of providing a rare window into how he really felt. Whatever he was about to say, it was going to be as close as I would get to the denouement I was so desperate for. I held my breath while a sunbaked, somewhat frazzled, and thoroughly exhausted Tony sat down in front of Mo’s camera one last time.
“There’s that great line in the beginning of Apocalypse Now,” he said. “You know, ‘I wanted a mission, and for my sin
s, they gave me one.’ I’ve wanted to come to the Congo for as long as I’ve been telling stories or making television. I’ve been a student of its history. Uh, it’s a place that’s always fascinated me in… in sort of an awful and mesmerizing way. And I knew it was going to be a frustration shooting here, I mean, it’s a dangerous place. You’re at the mercy of many, many, many unpredictable things… I wanted to come here… And I did.”
Chapter Five
SIGNS YOU’RE IN A CULT
I SPENT THE WEEKS AFTER TONY’S SUICIDE IN A STATE OF SEMI-STUNNED autopilot. As hard as it was, and nearly impossible to focus on work, I was thankful to be busy and glad for the distraction. It seemed distasteful to consider legal obligations at a time like this; however, there were realities to deal with. For starters, the company owed more episodes to fulfill the contract with CNN. Chris and Lydia called a meeting, and it was decided that we would produce two final episodes of Parts Unknown: “Tony’s Impact” and a “Crew Special.”
“I call ‘Crew Special,’” I said without thinking. I didn’t have to think. The “Crew Special” as I envisioned it would be a behind-the-scenes look at some of the madness as well as a tribute to Tony from the people who’d made the show. I was hoping to start to process some of the chaos going on inside my head, and I instinctively knew it would give me the opportunity to talk to all the core members of the team, help answer some of the questions I’d been wrestling with since even before Tony’s death. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy given that we were all still in a state of shock and grief.
Meanwhile, something unexpected was happening. Tony was being lauded as inspirational, and had come to embody respect, compassion, authenticity, tolerance, empathy, adventure, humility, and humanism. Fuck, Tony was practically being ordained a saint. It seemed like I couldn’t open an email or web page without being exposed to the outpouring of grief. How did he have such a deep impact on such a large number of people? Over the course of years spent making the show, whoever may or may not have been watching had become something of an intangible concept. Truth told, I’d forgotten it was a TV show; Tony was the only audience that mattered.
In Kitchen Confidential, a chapter is devoted to Tony’s mentor, Bigfoot, whom he describes as,
Cunning, manipulative, brilliant, mercurial, physically intimidating—even terrifying—a bully, a yenta, a sadist and a mensch: Bigfoot is all those things. He’s also the most stand-up guy I ever worked for. He inspires a strange and consuming loyalty. I try, in my kitchen, to be just like him. I want my cooks to have me inside their heads just like Bigfoot remains in mine. I want them to think that, like Bigfoot, when I look into their eyes, I see right into their very souls.
I think it would be fair to say that Tony had succeeded, and then some. On my last shoot, while in Indonesia, I’d had a revelation.
“We need to get you a pair of Persols. Those drugstore Ray-Bans aren’t going to cut it around Tony,” I said to Alex, a cameraman who didn’t travel with us on every shoot.
“Oh my god,” Alex said. “You guys are in a cult.”
“Ha, ha, nice try,” I said. But later that night in my hotel room I sat up googling Signs you might be in a cult. “Zealous commitment to the Leader, who is the ultimate authority.” Hmmm… Check… “Socialize with fellow Cult members only.” Well, yes. Check. “The group has been conditioned to be paranoid about the outside world.” Okay… Check. “The Leader relies on shame cycles.” Double check on that one. “Separation from the family unit.” “Encouraged to dress similarly.” “Dissenting opinion is crushed.” Check. Check. Check. Shit. Alex was right.
I guess the signs had been there all along, and I didn’t even notice. Three years before Indonesia, we had been in Korea. The shoot was a bit of a disaster, and it was a godsend to have Helen—Tony’s badass “Director of Special Operations”—along for the shoot. We’d start each day greeting each other with “Funny story…” referring to whatever nonsense we were currently dealing with, like reminding the fixers that we needed to film in the kitchen for the fourteenth time, or that just like every scene we film, yes, we needed the gear van to be accessible when filming today.
We were all set for the hwe-shik scene, a tradition in Korea that is essentially a company-sanctioned night out to get hammered with the boss. The only problem was the businessmen we had lined up had thought better of participating and backed out at the last minute. This scene was arguably the cornerstone of the entire episode, and we had nobody to film with. There were now fifty-five minutes until Tony’s arrival, assuming he wasn’t early. It was officially time to panic. In a desperate last-minute effort to find replacement salary men willing to get wasted on camera, the crew fanned out across the restaurant and neighborhood, accosting anyone in suit and tie and asking, “Do you speak English and want to be on TV?” Miraculously, at the last moment Helen found a group already a few rounds of soju deep, who were kind enough to save our asses and let a CNN camera crew join them on a full-fledged drinking binge. The poor guys were really going to regret this tomorrow morning.
The evening ended up going pretty well until the very end. Tony had signaled he was done, but there was one more important shot we needed, so I asked him to play ball and take another drink of soju. Out of nowhere Tony went from zero to sixty, and in front of everybody, he began hurling a tirade of particularly vitriolic and cutting insults in my direction. As he stormed out of the scene to head back to the hotel, I noticed the local Korean crew had all covered their faces with their hands to spare me the embarrassment.
In the traumatized silence of the van ride back to the hotel, Zach spoke first. “Man… Tony can be such a fucking dick sometimes.”
“It’s not his fault,” I said after a long pause. “He has a very stressful job.”
“OMG. You guys have Stockholm syndrome,” Helen said from the back of the van.
I googled it, and she was right. The next day I confronted Tony about the unprovoked nastiness. He instantly became gentler. Putting his arm around my shoulder, he said, “Tom, you’re not only so good at your job, you’re a good person. If I need something or I’m in trouble, you’re really one of the first people I’d call. I’m there for you. I’d show up at your funeral and hunt down any fake mourners and kill them.” Then the next day he unexpectedly turned on me again.
In a weird way, making the show felt like going to war, without the guns. Well, mostly there weren’t guns, although sometimes there were. Is there such a thing as vacation-of-a-lifetime PTSD where your main tormentor is also your hero, mentor, and boss? After having had these intense experiences of being in the trenches together with Tony and with the crew, sharing these adrenaline-inducing, life-altering experiences, going back to my regular life felt like the real trauma. It was all some Gordian knot of irreconcilable contradictions, basically a giant mind-fuck.
Everything centered around wanting to please Tony. And it wasn’t just me and the crew. It was also the fans and the restaurants, and the hotels and the airlines and the network and the advertisers and the people on Etsy that made all those “Saint Anthony the Opinionated” prayer candles.
“Do you think you were in a cult?” I asked Todd, who’d been shooting the show since the start of No Reservations. He chuckled at my question.
“Well, it’s hard to say, because I think I signed a nondisclosure agreement, so I really can’t talk about the cults other than saying—I forgot what it was I was going to say. You see? I’ve been brainwashed…”
Tony became extremely close with those who’d been on the show the longest. It felt validating to be a part of a small, elite group, surrounded by people I respected. He called us the “A-Team” and/or his LRRPs (Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol), comparing our deployment in the field to Captain Willard’s mission in Apocalypse Now. “He was wrapped too tight for an office job, man.”
In order to maintain the intense, small, in-club loyalty, Tony gave us a license to kill. Creatively speaking, of course. Everyone who worked the
show looked up to our “fearless leader” adoringly, and we operated more like a fraternal organization than a standard TV production. It was very hard to get in; once you got in, it was very hard to get out; and once you were out, you were dead. Or might as well be.
The rules for working on Tony’s shows were not to be found on the pages of any HR manual. There were behaviors perfectly acceptable in polite society that were unforgivable deal-breakers for Tony. Stingy tipper, vegan, mediocre, tea drinker, late, or a fan of Jimmy Buffett’s music, you’re off the show. Conversely, horribly embarrassing, self-destructive acts that would be more than reason enough for termination at any other place of employment might be perfectly acceptable conduct among Tony’s “band of misfits.” Binge drinking, grand theft auto, perjury, or psychological blackmail, no problem. Threatening to leave an “upper-decker” in the network producer’s toilet, now that deserves a promotion!
Tony’s leadership techniques were CIA caliber: duplicitous, unforgivable, possibly criminal, and usually extremely effective. Tony recruited informants, disseminated fake information, and stoked inter-team rivalries, pitting director against director, camera against camera, to motivate everyone to do our best work.
Doctor Tony held liberal views on the dispensation of prescription medication and was a staunch advocate of flying pills. “Toss back a few of these bad boys with some scotch before takeoff, and you wake up in Asia. Really, it’s the only way to fly.” One morning at the airport Tony asked the crew how we were planning to “manage” the flight. Everyone broke out their stashes for a game of “pill poker,” swapping a rainbow assortment of sleeping pills, pain meds, and antianxiety meds. “I’ll see your Xanax and raise you two diazepam for one Klonopin…” Washing down a fistful of pills with a breakfast beer, I couldn’t help but notice the wholesome family at the next table staring at us with a look of horror and disgust on their faces that was… memorable. Those delightful little pills did wonders for my fear of flying, and it was smooth sailing until the time I accidentally consumed the wrong cocktail. I hazily recall an erudite conversation with the woman seated next to me. She was a Rhodes Scholar and seemed genuinely interested in whatever it was I did for a living. The next thing I remember was THUMP as the plane touched down at JFK. The seat next to me was empty. I was later informed that, among other indiscretions, I’d apparently rummaged through every overhead bin in the cabin looking for my checked suitcase. It was more the fear of waking up zip-tied to the bulkhead than the shame and embarrassment of liver failure at 35,000 feet that eventually convinced me to quit the magic flying pills.