by Tom Vitale
“Jeez, Tom-o, are you cracking up?” Zach asked. I narrowed my eyes and glared at rabbit-hating Zach for a moment before deciding to pretend he didn’t exist. I named the dark gray bunny Hip and the brown bunny Hop. I loved it when they wrinkled their noses. Arriving, we linked up with Todd, who was already at the farm, and I gave the cameras a list of things to film. Then I went back to the van and turned my attention to Hip and Hop. After an emotional goodbye, I reluctantly handed them over to a husband and wife who worked on the farm, along with strict instruction that, as a personal favor, my rabbits were to be well taken care of.
Feeling just better enough about the world to soldier on, I uncorked a wine bottle from one of the cases in the gear van and surveyed the dramatic sloping vineyard. It was a stunning view; Hip and Hop were going to be so happy at their new home. I actually felt a bit better about myself, the world, and the job. Later, with filming wrapped up, the cameramen returned for crew meal. I chose to remain outside, at peace in the quiet with my bottle.
When it was time to head back to Porto, I climbed in the van with Todd.
“Did you get good stuff today?” I asked.
“Yeah, but we missed you at lunch,” Todd said.
“Oh? What did they make for you?” I asked, completely uninterested. “More tripe?”
“No,” Todd said. “Rabbit stew.”
IT WASN’T ALL BAD; SOME meals are just special—not necessarily because of what you’re eating, but who you’re eating with, and in what context. These sorts of meals don’t come along that often, but when they do, you remember them for the rest of your life.
Our 2010 Naples shoot was a charmed trip, full of big characters, good times, great food, and beautiful scenery. It was also a family show. My dad, Zach’s dad, and Tony’s family came along for the trip, and Naples was turning out to be one of the most fun places I’d visited.
“You might experience Rome, but Naples experiences you,” Tony said. “It’s a city of people who drive against traffic, or controsenso, which is a metaphor for how they live.”
Narrow cobblestone streets were a free-for-all, crowded with shops, people, speeding scooters, and small cars fighting their way through. Drying laundry hung from every balcony, making Naples reminiscent of photographs from the early 1900s New York City Lower East Side. On many street corners, mountains of uncollected trash piled up, the result of a Mafia garbage strike. Catholic processions weaved through the streets, barefoot performers clad in white playing music in the lead-up to Easter.
Any time we filmed in Italy, Tony insisted we include a nonna. We had one all lined up, but due to an illness in the family, our granny canceled, leaving sixteen hours to find a replacement. This sort of scene collapse had been typical of the shoot thus far. Naples was a tough location, but we all rolled with the punches. Every night around eleven p.m. the next day’s scenes would somehow inevitably disintegrate. But in typical Neapolitan style, plan B magically ended up better than the original.
Josh and I were discussing the nonna cancelation issue with Emanuela and Lucio, our fixers, when Rosario, Tony’s driver, overheard.
“I can solve your problem,” he said excitedly. “My mother, she is the best cook in all of Napoli!”
Actually, if Rosario’s mom was anything like her son, personality-wise at least, I could imagine she’d make for some interesting television. Rosario was forty-five, lived at home with his mother, worked the pedals of his BMW like Mario Andretti on the track, and could cut any travel time in half. He was short, bald, wore a leather jacket, and had all the southern Italian swagger you expect from a good Neapolitan mama’s boy.
“Let’s do it!” I said, since we didn’t have alternative options anyway.
The next morning, we met the force of nature that was Rosario’s mother. Nonna Giuseppina was a feisty eighty-year-old, chain-smoking grandmother with hair dyed jet black. Four and a half feet tall, incredibly animated, as well as opinionated, she possessed a powerful, high-pitched, gravelly voice.
“Perfect,” I said. “Tony will love her.”
Tony frequently said that his great sadness in life was that he wasn’t born into a big Italian family. Maybe he recognized something fundamentally Italian in himself—using food as the ultimate expression of love, or as the ultimate weapon; anyone who has had the privilege of enduring a full family-style Italian meal knows that you are fed until the point of pain.
Rosario and Giuseppina lived in a fourth-floor walk-up in an apartment building in Centro Storico. Mother of seven, Giuseppina kissed her dead husband’s picture each time she walked past. Giuseppina wore a blue patterned smock and smoked while cooking. She was making her famous Sunday ragout. She’d browned pork sausage, veal, pork ribs, and braciole, and had been stewing them for hours with tomato sauce. I watched in awe as Giuseppina somehow managed to be everywhere at once. She was tough, and even though she didn’t speak a word of English, it didn’t stop her from talking to us like we could understand. When Tony arrived, Giuseppina took the roses he brought, then put him straight to work.
“She is cooked for you, so you have to cook for her,” Emanuela translated. The cameras had trouble keeping six-foot-four Tony and four-foot-six Giuseppina in the same shot. Tony loved that Giuseppina had the mouth of a sailor, and he didn’t mind her occasional scolding of “Nah, nah, nah, nah!” when he’d done something wrong.
When the ragout was done, we filmed a wonderful and boisterous family meal.
“Your mother would be a TV star in America,” Tony said to Rosario.
After we wrapped the cameras, the crew sat down around the dining room table to eat together. The ragout was fantastic, and the secondi tender after stewing for so long. Tony stayed the whole evening and even had a second helping. But it wasn’t just the fantastic meal. In a way that I’m not sure ever happened before or since, I really felt like we were all one big extended family sharing this Sunday meal. The fixers, Josh, Mo, Zach and his dad, my dad, Tony, and of course our hosts. Nonna Giuseppina smoked, told dirty jokes, and kept the whole table doubled over laughing. Seeing how much my dad was enjoying himself, and how proud he was of me, brought tears to my eyes. At the end of the evening, Giuseppina came around and kissed everyone on the forehead as she poured us each a glass of amaro. It was an evening I won’t soon forget.
A GLASS OF AMARO AT the end of a meal embodies the Italian point of view on life: You can’t fully appreciate the sweet without a taste of the bitter. No meal is complete without it. The day after filming with Nonna Giuseppina, we went to Cetera, an old fishing village south of Naples. Leading down to the beach, narrow shops lined the street, where vendors were selling colorful fruits, vegetables, and meats—a picture-perfect Mediterranean postcard. Tony had been in good spirits all week, but today—in contrast to his gray sweater, black leather jacket, and black Persols—his mood was especially brilliant.
With a bottle of amaro, snifter glass, three cameras, and four producers in tow, Tony walked across the pebble beach and sat on the gunnel of a bright turquoise-and-red-striped fishing boat. It was one of those overcast days that did something strange to the light, amplifying rather than muting color. Clouds obscuring the sunset glowed an almost cotton candy pink and reflected off the shore.
“Into the sweet life where everything is beautiful and shiny and colorful and wonderful… a little something bitter,” Tony said, taking a sip of his amaro while looking out over the teal blue Tyrrhenian. “Oh, that’s good. This is ridiculously beautiful. Isn’t it?”
Amaro is just as much a philosophy as it is a digestive, and we had a tradition of ending our Italy episodes with Tony enjoying a glass.
“Once again, life doesn’t suck. If you really think about it, the fact that I’m here, and enjoying this, pretty much proves there is no God,” Tony said. “Okay. I think we got some peppy commentary there. Cameras down, I’m done.”
“But wait! Why are we here?” I said, tweaking because Tony was done filming when we’d only just started.
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“That’s like a season one Cook’s Tour question,” Tony said. “Why are we here on the Amalfi Coast? Why am I here in this idyllic town? In this most magnificent country in the world? Drinking amaro on the beach? Why the fuck wouldn’t I? How could you ask me that?”
“That’s answering with a negative,” I said, blindly grasping at any way to draw out my filming minutes. “Could you try and answer with a positive?”
“So, Tom, step on in, let’s get a podcast,” Tony said, turning the tables around on me. “Let’s face it, you are the gold standard of No Reservations producer-directors; what tips can you give to hopeful young film students who would like to be like you?”
The cameras pivoted and focused on me as I froze like a deer in the headlights. There were few things I disliked more than being on camera. The footage was thoroughly unusable for the episode, and I was only comfortable hidden behind the fourth wall.
“Can’t we just talk about the beauty of the Amalfi Coast instead?” I asked, trying to back out of Tony’s shot, but he caught me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
“What exactly were your hopes and dreams for this scene?” Tony asked.
“I thought, you know, we would set up why we came to Southern Italy,” I said. “Cuz you have some pretty strong views on the subject.”
“What kind of sick freak would not… I mean, look at this place… do you really have to ask…? Do you think any viewers will wonder, ‘Gee, why is Tony here in one of the most beautiful places on earth? Eating this amazing food?’ Do you think this is something that people struggle with?”
“Well, I, umm,” I stammered.
“What do you see in that lens, man? How could it all have become so twisted and distorted?” Tony asked. “Come on, Tom. Stop and smell the roses for once in your life! This is a good gig, right? This is what you need to understand, this is the secret in that tiny, tiny little ninth chamber…” Tony drew out the reveal for dramatic emphasis. “The secret is it’s really not about the show. It’s about having a goooood fucking time. So relax! Let’s enjoy some downtime for a change. Your dad’s here. Zach’s dad is here. My family is here.”
“You’re absolutely right. It’s a family show,” I said. “It’s a good time, thank you.”
“Look, right over there, a nice bottle of amaro, we can drain that fucker, then let’s go out for some gelato,” Tony said.
“Oh, totally!” I said. “Can we film it?”
Chapter Fifteen
POLITE DINNER CONVERSATION
IT HAD BEEN ALMOST YEAR SINCE TONY’S SUICIDE, AND AS MUCH AS I tried, no amount of blaming, alcohol, or running away could spare me from some difficult realizations. Everything I held true was starting to feel like it had been either a lie or a mistake. I’d considered Tony a role model pretty much my entire adult life. I’d thought he had it all figured out. Here was someone else with a similar appetite for trouble, a certain degree of social awkwardness, brave and smart enough to disregard all sensible advice and march to the beat of his own drum. I had looked at Tony, his triumphs, and my place in his band of misfits as proof I was on the right track. Knowing now where Tony’s path had ultimately led, I was left to question the wisdom of my own choices.
Whether out of strength or resentment I don’t know, but I resolved not to repeat Tony’s mistakes. I owed it to myself to at least try and put the pieces of my life back together. Being at what was easily the lowest point of my life, I didn’t really have anywhere to go but up. I’d been using alcohol to numb the pain, and for a while it worked. Until it didn’t. So the choice to stop drinking cold turkey was an easy one. I started seeing a therapist. I liked her. As far as psychiatrists went, anyway. Most of the time I talked about Tony. I was still afraid if I talked about Tony too much, she would think I was crazy.
On the one-year anniversary of Tony’s death, Todd hosted a small get-together at his house in Brooklyn. Josh, who’d moved to Los Angeles with his wife and two kids, flew in for the occasion. Everyone gathered around the piano, Josh at the keys, singing Bowie’s “Oh You Pretty Things.” I stood back watching, more comfortable at a slight remove. Todd picked up his guitar and took over the musical entertainment, which offered Josh and me the opportunity to catch up. The conversation, of course, gravitated toward Tony.
“You know, our jobs were to try to think like Tony,” Josh said. “And he had great taste, so most of the shit he liked, I ended up liking. So much of who I am is wrapped up with Tony. Once I got to go with him to an Iggy Pop concert, and midway through the performance Iggy dove off the stage, right into my arms.”
“Shut up!” I said.
“True story. I caught Iggy right in my arms like he was a little baby. And then carried him back up on stage. So the next night we were at dinner, and Tony introduced me to Iggy. He said, ‘This is Josh, but you guys already know each other.’ I’ll be driving the kids to school, and my Spotify algorithm will play some Iggy and the Stooges. Takes me right back.”
“I’ve been struggling with that. What’s me? What’s Tony? How much do I need to give up? How much can I keep?” I said.
“You know what I needed to do?” Josh said. “When I was in France on that last shoot, Haj was pregnant, and I went out shopping. I got little storks, some French baby books, knicknacks, shit like that. And when Tony killed himself, everything happened so fast, I just threw it all in my suitcase. Back at home my suitcase sat in my garage for a long fucking time. I didn’t want to deal with it. Then one day, I just realized I needed to get that shit out of my house. So, yeah, in a way I’m still mad at him, but my suitcase and everything in it from France was what I needed to get rid of. Everything else belongs to me.”
“That’s smart,” I said halfheartedly. Seeing I looked sad, Josh put his enormous hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“You know, I did decide to keep something from France,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Just before I left for the shoot, Haj and I found out that JJ was gonna be a big brother. I got to tell Tony that we were expecting a little girl. When I told him, Tony smiled, shook my hand, and said, ‘Now you’ll have your sun and your moon.’ I really treasure that moment. It’s sort of crazy too, Haj and I had already decided to name her Leila, which means ‘night’ in Farsi. So Tony called another one.”
“I never thought it would end,” I said. “It was one hell of a trip. Well… it was an honor to serve with you, Josh.”
“That’s right, brother! Storming the shores of Margaritaville! We won that day. Can you believe we used to do stupid shit like that all over the world? Like fuck. How lucky are we? It’s important to acknowledge how lucky we are.”
I smiled and nodded, but inside I didn’t feel lucky. Acknowledging how lucky we were required admitting it was in the past. It also required admitting that, unlike other members of the crew, somewhere along the way I’d lost the ability to stop and smell the roses, too consumed with stress and worry to ever allow myself to enjoy the moment. Looking around the room, it seemed that, in spite of dealing with their own traumas related to Tony’s death, everyone else had found a way to pick up the pieces. It was time to do something with my life, but going back to TV wasn’t really an option.
I started writing about Tony and my travels because there was nothing else I could do. Searching for inspiration through old shoot notebooks, raw footage, and emails, I was startled how much Tony talked about death, on camera and off.
TONY’S SINGLE FAVORITE RECURRING MEALTIME icebreaker was “What would you choose for your last meal?” After hearing how his dining companion replied, Tony would often answer his own question, usually some blow-your-mind sushi type thing. “If I died with a mouthful of uni and some really good rice, particularly if it was made by Yasuda, I wouldn’t complain, as I bled out on the hinoki wood bar.” More useful advice, I once heard him say, “When facing death, it’s a good idea to eat light.”
Another of Tony’s polite dinner conversation topics was descri
bing the way he wanted to die, usually in vivid detail. The circumstances of his imaginary death mirrored whatever mood he was in at the time.
Terrified of a slow death in a hospital bed, Tony’s original plan was that when the doctor found the inevitable lump, he’d disappear to an island somewhere in the South Pacific, spending the remainder of his days on the beach shooting up his dearly missed heroin.
After the birth of his daughter—a happy, optimistic period—Tony fantasized about being an old man in an Italian garden—like the scene in The Godfather—keeling over of a heart attack while chasing grandchildren, orange peel in his mouth.
When in a darker mood he might say, “I want to be run over by an ice-cream truck, get caught up in the wheel well, the oblivious driver dragging me down the street as happy ice-cream truck music plays, horrifying the children.”
Another variant of this “death by amusement” rant centered around falling into a wood chipper and being sprayed into a crowd of unsuspecting department store shoppers. “People are trying on the free perfume and then suddenly, this giant blowhole starts shooting bone splinters and blood spray and bits of guts all over everybody.”
Many years ago in Baja I’d asked Tony to make a comment to the camera about his first impressions.
“Jeez, you never give up, do you?!” he joked. “When I die, you’ll be there at my funeral, poking me with a stick, asking, ‘What are your first impressions of being dead?’”
Tony casually pulled off flamboyant and seemingly death-defying escapades on a regular basis. After watching him walk away from enough dangerously misguided stunts, skydiving mishaps, and spine-crushing ATV rollovers, I’d begun to think of him as invincible, if not immortal. He had nine lives, despite what seemed like a death wish.
I RUBBED FROST FROM THE window. Outside there was nothing but swirling snow and the bone-chilling howl of a late December squall blowing down from Siberia. Through the thwop, thwop, thwop of the windshield wipers, our headlights illuminated the occasional shadowy figure. Armed with a parka and broom, they were fighting a losing battle to sweep clear accumulating snow drifts on this unfrequented stretch of rural Manchurian highway.