Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

Sensitive subject! Anthony Bourdain travelled to many many exotic and toxic places, He had to be prescribed an anti malaria drug. It is a fact that one of them is a killer - Mefloquine . If you have any trauma PTSD, addictions, altered brain chemistry etc...it can and will mess with your head.

My wife and I loved the movie and Anthony, we just wonder did they miss something .....

Greetings again from the darkness. As the film begins, we understand there will be no happy ending. Anthony Bourdain committed suicide by hanging in 2018 at the age of 61. As it was reported, everyone was shocked. Oscar winning documentarian Morgan Neville (TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM, 2013) interviews those who knew him best, and by the end of the film, we are left wondering why these folks were shocked at how his demise.

Bourdain ... called Tony by those who knew him ... spent most of the last 20 years of his life with a camera focused on him, so director Neville allows Bourdain to tell much of his own story. "I got very lucky" is how he explains turning a dishwasher job into the position of Chef at Brasserie Les Halles on Park Avenue in New York, and then evolving into an author, talk show guest, and host of TV travel and culinary shows.

Perhaps you read Bourdain's first book "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly", or maybe you know him from one of his four TV shows where he traveled around the globe eating strange food and exploring unusual cultures. Then again, to some, he'll always be known as the guy who was filmed eating a live cobra heart. All of those bits are discussed here, but the real interesting segments occur as others talk about the man they knew/loved/worked with.

Bourdain's second wife Ottavio, his brother, his friends, his agent, and his production crew are all interviewed here and are surprisingly forthcoming in their recollections and insight into Tony. We even see clips of Bourdain with his daughter, though she is not interviewed. The descriptions add up to a complicated guy. A natural storyteller who was a control freak and hard on those he worked with. Yet he was also charming, immensely intelligent and articulate, and eager to make satisfying TV. He also comes across a bit lost as a person most of the time, never more than when he's filmed asking Iggy Pop, "What thrills you?" There is even a segment with Tony in a session with his therapist.

The film, and Bourdain himself, don't shy away from his addictive nature. He admits to a drug problem when he was younger, and for the rest of his life he jumped from one non-drug related addiction to another. His personal life seemed to take a turn when he fell for Italian actress Asia Argento and he became an advocate for the #MeToo movement. His tragic end is discussed, and maybe those closest to him were simply too close to see what seems obvious to us now. Director Neville uses no shortage of archival footage and photos, but it's the personal interviews that strike the emotional chord here. Two films, APOCALYPSE NOW and VIOLENT CITY apparently had a dramatic impact on Bourdain, and though the end is tragic, his legacy as an adventurous storyteller lives on.

In theaters on July 16, 2021.

This was an honest and at times brutally unflinching look at a very famous person who had a very enigmatic end. It will make you feel lots and miss the man more, but it's doesn't answer anything and leaves you feeling both sad at what happened, but glad that you were there for the ride.

Still miss him, his show was so great... This is very much worth seeing.

This doc is well put together and very beautiful at times. It uses bits of audio book narration, clips from various Bourdain shows, previous press pieces, home movies, friend and family interviews and more - to tell the tale of someone that has fascinated many, myself included.

I picked up the audio book of Kitchen Confidential nearly a decade after it came out. I was a young mom who needed the escapism of a story in my ear to survive my dead end job. Tony gave me all of that and more. I listened to that book and Medium Raw, when it came out, over and over. I rocked babies at night to them, I typed hours of data into spreadsheets to them, I knew which chapters to listen to when I had had a bad day or needed to get motivated for a long day ahead. My commute was full of Bourdain and his voice became a comfort blanket. I watched the brief narrative TV show so many times I am frankly surprised some network didn't consider it for a reboot. I turn on one of his travel shows and fall asleep to it when I now travel for work. And I don't think I'm alone in that. I think Tony meant a lot to a lot of people for a lot of reasons.

This film can feel voyeuristic and terrible if you are just mildly curious about Bourdain. This might not have been made for you. Who it was made for is people who needed a safe place to mourn with someone who also cared for a person. If you feel like an idiot mourning a person you never really knew - join the club. But I think the beauty of Tony is that he let us know him in some way that made us also feel known. I needed to mourn the loss of my friend and maybe you do too.

This is a brilliant documentary on the adult life and success of Anthony Bourdain, warts and all. I found myself mesmerized by his charismatic charm and his authentic, complicated nature as a "mediocre cook" to a global book and television sensation. The film has great historical footage which showcase this wild ride. The film also is filled with interviews of people that knew and worked with Tony. These folks clearly loved and admired him, but were very forthcoming about the challenges of working with Tony. The film is good film making. Not too long. It is well structured and well made-unlike many modern, so called, documentaries. The look at Bourdain in the light of Conrad and Colonel Kurtz is brilliant. The film starts out, in Tony's own words, telling you the story will not have a happy ending. The story night not have a happy ending, but the ride is joyous.