by Tom Vitale
About fifteen people spoke, and each time someone finished, the audience applauded. Even Tony’s memorial service was some form of entertainment. One of the last people to take the microphone was the indefatigable chef José Andrés, with whom I’d traveled on a few shows.
“I asked Tony a lot of questions all the time,” José said. “One day he responded, ‘Who do you think I am, the Wizard of Oz?’ But Tony gave all of us the heart to bring people from far away to feel closer together, realize that people who are different aren’t our enemies, and gave us the courage to do the things we wanted to do. And though Tony didn’t answer my question, he gave me the power to come up with my own answer. I guess at the end of the day Tony really was my Wizard of Oz.”
Looking around at Tony’s famous friends, it occurred to me they probably hadn’t spent much time with him unless there was a camera involved. The same went for nearly everyone else in the room. I was startled to realize there were fewer than a handful of people here who weren’t associated either with fame or television. After another moment or two, it hit me kind of hard when I recognized that less than charitable incrimination included myself.
Rather than bringing any kind of closure, the memorial instead served to make the impossibility of Tony’s death that much more impossible. How was it that the most brilliant and amazing person I’d ever known, someone whose words could touch millions of fans, had done so poorly when it came to his personal life? It just wasn’t right. Tony was capable of better. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t able to shake away the image of paid mourners.
FROM RURAL MINNESOTA TO URBAN Manchuria, Tony got recognized and approached everywhere. Through the years we got to meet so many fans while filming, at dinner off camera, during cigarette breaks, or Tony’s favorite: mid-dash for the airport bathroom between flights.
“I am so sorry,” the maître d’ apologized, chagrined that Tony’s meal and my cameras had been interrupted for the fourth time. “I don’t know what’s going on. Michael Jordan was here last night, and nobody bothered his table!”
Something clicked when she said that. I’d seen it endless times all over the world. Tony could strike up a conversation with someone he’d never met, and twenty minutes later they’d be talking like old friends. He possessed a charisma that made him distinctly accessible, familiar even. His magic radiated out through the television to people he never met. Complete strangers greeted Tony with a sense of intimacy, like they’d either already shared a beer together or, if they offered one now, Tony would just sit down and the two of them would casually pick up the conversation where they left off. It was one of Tony’s super powers, and befitting a man of his complexity and contradictions, it was both a blessing and a curse.
Tony’s ability to connect with anyone from all over the world was strangely at odds with the shy and often insecure man I knew. Tony openly admitted he couldn’t complain, nobody was going to sympathize with the burden of being popular. He saw it this way: if you’re going to enjoy the perks of being famous, you have to be obliging to the people who make it possible. Tony bent over backward to be gracious to anyone who wanted a book signed or to pose with him for a picture, unable to stand the look of disappointment on someone’s face if he refused. It was an existential trap for a self-conscious man who lived much of his life on TV.
Often, when one person asked for a picture, all of a sudden, a line would form. Tony called it the “Kissing Booth,” and it could ruin not only Tony’s mood but an entire day’s worth of filming. So that presented quite an incentive to gently protect Tony from his public. But if I went overboard, seemed “uncool,” or was ever harsher than necessary when rebuffing a selfie hound, Tony would turn incandescent. One memorable instance, I went too far.
We were filming a walking beat with Tony at the end of a long day shooting in Hong Kong. Everyone was jet-lagged, dehydrated, and running on fumes when I spotted the look: a not so subtle bulging of the eyes mixed with disbelief, mixed with adrenaline.
“OMG, is that Anthony Bourdain?” I heard the man say.
I was praying he at least waited until the cameras went down, but of course he beelined it right to Tony, ruining the shot.
“Wow! I’m your number one fan! What are you doing in Hong Kong? Can I get a picture with you?”
Tony obliged the photograph, but instead of moving on, his number one fan kept talking despite the fact that we were obviously in the middle of filming. I could tell by the look on Tony’s face he was losing patience and might decide to return to the hotel at any moment.
“Excuse me,” I said in a practiced tone, intended to be polite yet firm. “We’re filming right now—”
“Umm, do you mind?” the man said, glaring at me, clearly upset I’d interrupted his conversation with Anthony Bourdain. That’s when the jet lag and the stress and lack of food caught up with me.
“Do I mind? Do I mind? YES, I fucking mind!” I said, my voice getting louder. “This is my GOD DAMN FUCKING TV show and RIGHT NOW you’re ruining it!”
“Woah. Chill out, dude,” he said, and walked away.
“Good work, Tom. That’s how it starts,” Tony said, shaking his head. “Piss off one fan, the word spreads, and next thing you know, I’m public enemy number one, jerking off motorists on the West Side Highway.”
AS A PART OF OUR 2016 Buenos Aires episode, I pitched a therapy scene, and surprisingly, Tony agreed. Even more surprisingly, he showed up prepared with notes. Reclining on a daybed across from a local therapist who’d agreed to the shoot, Tony opened up.
“I suspect that by being on television and by writing books that I am already borderline personality,” he said. “It’s crushingly lonely. I travel over two hundred days a year… I feel like, uh, Quasimodo, you know? If Quasimodo stayed in nice hotel suites with high-thread-count sheets, that would be me.”
I was surprised by Tony’s on-camera honesty, though he did often talk about the subject. Tony’s awkward relationship with the camera was in some way related to his morbid fear of clowns. Perhaps a phobia of being a clown. He compared TV to a nightmarish carnival in which he was the side-show freak.
“It’s unnatural,” Tony said to the therapist. “The camera hanging there waiting for you to do something entertaining. Shove the chicken leg in your mouth, say something funny, fall down and stand up… They used to hire like desperately poor people who were in terrible circumstances who they would dress up as the ‘wild man of Borneo’ and they would bite the heads off chickens, eat disgusting stuff for the entertainment of the carnival goers and—and the patrons. I feel like that sometimes.”
Though he came off as extremely adventurous, in reality Tony was—increasingly, in later years—even becoming agoraphobic. Though he knew it was never going to happen, he said, “In a perfect world this show wouldn’t have me in it. You would see what I see and I would write everything.… I like making television; I just don’t want to be on television.”
Oddly, in addition to clowns, nurse shoes, and alpine vistas, Tony had developed a phobia of ordering room service, and would often go hungry rather than place an order. When I’d connected the dots, I offered to call the hotel from wherever I was and have them send up an order of spaghetti bolognese, which he gladly accepted. Presumably either embarrassed or fearful of bothering me, Tony never actively requested I order him food, but he was always extremely grateful when I did.
Adding to the complication of someone like Tony wrestling with self doubt, he had a talent for attracting people from the most extreme fringes of the fan world. In Paraguay a group of crazed individuals camped out for days in our hotel lobby waiting for Tony like he was John Lennon or a new iPhone release. We once worked with an American expat named Jasper who was normal enough until he finally got to meet Tony. He whipped out a dog-eared copy of Kitchen Confidential from his trench coat like Hinckley pulling a gun on Reagan and gushed, “I’m so, so, so sorry for panting like a schoolgirl, but when I was recovering from surgery your book was what ke
pt me going. You’re so so brilliant, and now getting to meet you, this is like seriously the highlight of my life! I feel like Inigo Montoya from the end of the Princess Bride, I mean, what am I going to do next after reaching the mountaintop?!”
Tony handled the awkward and slightly creepy compliment gracefully, saying, “Yes, we get a lot of mail from hospitals and prisons, apparently I’m very popular with that demographic.”
My personal favorite was Karen of catsworking.wordpress.com. She devoted herself—fully—to blogging about politics, cats, and Tony. Karen’s investigative skills would put the FBI to shame. Her in-depth and insightful blog posts about Tony were often chillingly accurate. Tony spoke of her often, and spent a fair amount of time devising ways to ensure he remained on Karen’s good side.
Usually it was the road crew who interacted with Tony’s fans, but Pam, our office production coordinator, who never worked in the field and never met Tony, still managed to get a taste for herself. Pam was a devotedly punctual redhead who wore too much makeup, but her most defining characteristic was a chronic sour disposition. Then one day everything changed. Out of nowhere Pam became bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and delightfully helpful. It was quite the mystery, but we didn’t have to wait long to find out what was going on.
Pam’s new friend came by the office to visit her the next afternoon. He was a handsome chef several years her senior, and had brought an enormous tray of delicious cupcakes he’d baked for the office. Day after day Pam radiated happiness, and we were graced by the occasional visit from the chef, now her boyfriend, always with some kind of pastry in hand. Soon Pam was positively glowing, relaying how Chef Husband Material was taking her on a cruise over the holiday.
“It’s getting serious,” she said, while opening boxes of resort casual clothing and accessories ordered for the trip.
Three days before the cruise, Pam showed up to work late, wiping tears from her mascara-streaked face.
“Shithead dumped me,” Pam cried.
Eventually it emerged that the shithead chef had only been dating Pam in the hope of running into his idol, Anthony Bourdain. But after two weeks and no sighting at the office, creepy stalker chef had realized Pam wasn’t the way to Tony’s heart.
The ultimate award for super, superfan goes to a meth addict who binge-mailed Tony letters when not in prison. Let’s call her Tammy. Sometimes she loved Tony and wrote him poetry, other times she was irate and threatened his life. Often these letters were scrawled in lipstick or crayon on the blank side of a Denny’s placemat or a grease-stained paper bag from Arby’s. Tammy seemed to believe she was Tony’s illegitimate daughter and on multiple occasions threatened to go public unless he gave her the “Bourdain Jewels,” to which she was the rightful heir. Tony actually appreciated Tammy’s letters, especially the menacing ones. If she made a few more threats, the NYPD would approve his concealed carry permit.
AS TONY’S NOTORIETY INCREASED OVER the years, famous people started appearing on the program. In general this was, for me, a giant pain in the ass. I’d like to be able to say it was because the true stars of the show were the local everyday people who made it what it was. And celebrities have rigid schedules, demanding special attention. And celebrity doesn’t impress me. And though all those things are sort of true, the bigger reason was that I was already socially anxious around everyone we filmed, all strangers, really, let alone famous people. Similarly, Tony often seemed a bit off his game, habitually mystified as to why celebrity guest stars had agreed to participate. It’s not like they got paid. Suffering from what he called “fan-boy-itus,” I’d notice Tony saying some “non-Tony” things, his voice a little high-pitched and squeaky.
One of the first household names was Christopher Walken, who could only be reached by fax. Billy Joel canceled at the last minute, and because Iggy Pop didn’t think Tony was “too much of a dick,” he agreed to come on the show. In Haiti we filmed with Sean Penn. He was the real deal, genuinely giving his all to help victims of the 2010 earthquake, no helicoptering in for a photo opp.
When we were delayed before filming a scene for our Southern Italy episode with Apocalypse Now and Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola—a legend among men and one of Tony’s heroes—the only thing that calmed Tony’s nerves was my telling him the delay was the result of Francis being nervous about appearing on camera as well. Which happened to be true.
With an inside understanding of how film and TV was made, directors were, for me, the most intimidating type of celebrity guest. I was terrified they’d discover just how disorganized we were, or even worse, judge us as inept. But Darren Aronofsky came along for the entire Madagascar shoot, and he turned out to be an awesome guy. At the end of a long day spent filming on a train, I sat with Darren on the nose of the engine as it twisted through mountainous countryside toward the coast. After five days together, I finally worked up the nerve to ask him why he wanted to be on the show.
“I wanted an adventure, and Tony’s amazing,” Darren said, taking a swig of his beer. “I didn’t really know him, but my girlfriend was a big fan. She showed me the Iran episode, and I thought it was one of the smartest pieces of TV I’d ever seen. Tony has this way of speaking to everyone, both sides of the aisle. That’s really rare.”
Wait, had a director I’d looked up to since school just said something I did was one of the smartest pieces of TV he’d ever seen?! Though one hell of a compliment, it had made me even more nervous about the Madagascar episode living up to expectations. I needn’t have worried. Darren enjoyed himself so much, he came along with us for a second shoot in Bhutan.
I was profoundly grateful and thankful for all of these experiences, at least in retrospect. But the unfortunate reality was that I was so stressed in the moment that I rarely ever enjoyed the trips enough to be thankful for them while they were happening. A big part of it was that at every moment, I felt like a fraud. Even sixteen years, 100 episodes, and five Emmys later, that feeling never went away. As the outside praise and recognition grew, the self-deprecatory voice inside my head only got louder.
I think to some degree Tony suffered from the same sense of imposter syndrome that I found so paralyzing. Whenever a personal hero, let alone someone as powerful and respected as President Obama, requested to appear on the show, it confused Tony. His increasing social anxiety and agoraphobia was, I think, connected to this pervasive fear of being exposed as a fraud.
Tony was more at ease when there wasn’t a camera in his face, and that’s probably why most of my favorite memories happened between scenes. One of the more unforgettable experiences of my life wasn’t that we got to film with Bill Murray for the Hudson Valley episode, it was what happened after the cameras cut. Bill was late for an appointment in New York City, and Tony—thinking quickly—offered him a ride while I grabbed the keys to the Tahoe. By the time I stopped at the second yellow light in a row, Bill was visibly fidgeting.
“All right, that’s it,” he said, jumping out of the back seat and opening my door. “Get out, I’m driving.”
More than a little surprised, I glanced at Tony, who shot back a “just go with it” look. As soon as the light turned green, Bill floored it, swerving onto the parkway.
“This is a rental, right?” he asked. “Let me show you how to drive one of these things.” Already at highway speed, Bill downshifted into second gear and jammed the accelerator. Engine redlining and making a strange high-pitched whining roar, the SUV lurched forward like some massive four-wheel-drive sports car. “In order to get optimal performance, you need to keep the RPMs up there.”
Perfectly at ease manual shifting on the Henry Hudson at what must have been near eighty-five miles an hour, Bill nonchalantly alternated between telling Tony about Charleston—“You’d love it there, the people are really down to earth, good food too”—and giving me driving advice—“Don’t signal, New York drivers never let you in”—cutting off a taxi to demonstrate. When Bill jerked the wheel, the SUV didn’t just move from one lane
to another, it vaulted. Tony looked like a schoolboy on Christmas, and I was terrified, convinced we were going to die. Really, though, when you think about it, there are worse ways to go.
“No E-ZPass…?” Bill said as we approached the toll booth at Spuyten Duyvil. “Amateur move.”
He came to an abrupt stop behind a white van that appeared to be asking for directions. Bill sighed audibly, and after about fifteen seconds of waiting he leaned on the horn. Finally, the van drove off, and we pulled up to the tollbooth attendant, who was clearly about to yell at the jerk who’d been blowing his horn. That is until she saw it was Bill Murray, at which point she froze with her mouth open. Bill dropped the money in her hand, politely saying, “Thank you,” before peeling out.
After continuing down the West Side Highway at breakneck speed, the SUV veered off at 96th Street going so fast I don’t know how we didn’t flip over. “A couple years back I invested in a minor league baseball team, the Charleston Riverdogs. They’re pretty good,” Bill said, running a red light at Riverside.
“Aren’t you worried you’ll get a ticket?” I asked.
“Tom. Let me tell you something about police in New York. They really appreciate people who keep traffic moving,” Bill said.
I’m pretty sure this is only true if you’re Bill Murray, who I’m guessing doesn’t get tickets. Accelerating onto 86th, we cut across the park before screeching to a halt behind a big line of slow-moving cars. After about three seconds of patiently waiting, Bill sounded the horn. That is until he was distracted by an older woman Rollerblading past us, a bundle of plastic bags slung over a tattered pink winter coat.