In real life he was an incredible chef, a soul-seeker, hungry for truth and hungry for life…which is why we beg the question “Why did he do it?” In this poignant documentary directed by Morgan Neville about the life and sadly, the death, of Anthony Bourdain we begin to understand that answer.
In hindsight, one can’t help but think of the number of times Bourdain verbal suicide thoughts were drop-hinted into his ongoing and successful TV series Parts Unknown. It’s made apparent early-on that he traded in his younger days of heroin for a new addiction: Travel. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t face who he really was because apparently, he didn’t like who he really was. He hid behind tattoos and droll comic dialog. He hid behind his wonderment for a life he really wasn’t certain how to obtain. As is typical in these unfulfilled humans…’too much is never enough’ even though he displayed his demons publicly.
Bourdain sounded happiest and grounded when in the company of his daughter, Ariane, from his second wife, Ottavia Busa. Yet, he barely stayed home, traveling some 350 days a year, circling the globe, twice. Travel was his band-aid, but the emotional wounds ran too deep.
In his own words he kept seeking: “Had I not become a dishwasher I would never have become a cook, had I not become a cook, I never would have become a chef, and then a writer, and so on.
Yet, it’s not the food and the travel but the author bit that sparks the most interest, lending us emotional insight. Unlike chefs who thinks of themselves as authors (they’re not, they write recipes for their cookbooks) Bourdain could really write. Writers do nothing but write. They suffer. They have angst. Bourdain really was a writer. His diaries were literary. His life’s portrait so intimate. His observations, childlike. His words both playful and inquisitive. His NYT best-selling memoir, KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, an instant classic.
And that’s why his loss is felt so dearly. And eerily. Bourdain brought us into his soul.
This documentary really is a pep-talk-walk. It beats constant movement like a ‘beeping’ roadrunner, thus it’s title. His energy like that of a man who wants to run away from himself. And it reminds us that when a person so much bigger than life, dies of suicide, he’s both the victim and the perpetrator.
Despite the films brilliant take on the brilliant Bourdain, one can’t help thinking that it’s missing a chip. And it is…Anthony Bourdain. He’s dead and he can’t answer the haunting question we most still want to understand as the story wraps. Why? Damn it, why? And the regrets delivered by loved ones, like chef colleague, David Chang, or his agent, Kim Witherspoon, if only they knew… there’s a lot of should’ve, could’ve, would’ve felt for those left behind. And that’s a lot of us.