Anthony Bourdain did not leave a suicide note when he took his own life in 2018, a fact that adds to the puzzling bewilderment produced by his death. Bourdain was many things: among others, a chef, a traveler, an activist, a celebrity. But he was also, above all, a writer. While he gained his greatest fame as a host of television travel shows, it was as a writer, for The New Yorker and then in his memories of a sincere cook Confidential kitchen, who first emphasized his claim on the public's attention
Before his writing career, Bourdain also poured out his heart to his friends in emails, and even after his fame, he continued to hone his craft, writing the scripts for his shows. For him, writing was a tool for self-discovery and a way of understanding the world around him.
The torrent of words that gushed out from Bourdain during his life makes the silence of his last moments even more striking and difficult to process. For his many fans, Bourdain was a figure not only to admire but also to emulate. He put together a fascinating set of contradictions. He had a huge appetite for life, but that hunger for new experiences was enriched and elevated by genuine social awareness and seemingly limitless curiosity. He ate and traveled not in the spirit of a hedonist but as a humanist, someone for whom nothing human, not even eating the heart of a living snake, was strange. He was curious about the world and had the gift of making readers and viewers share his spirit of search. All of which begs the question, as his friend John Lurie asks in Morgan Neville's new documentary on Bourdain: "How can a narrator check without leaving a note?"
TThat's the question that haunts Neville's new movie, Roadrunner, which is less of a full press biography of Bourdain (the first 43 years of his life overlooked) and more of a meditation on his death and the pain that his family and friends and many of his fans still experience. In this way, they are two films at once: Full of lyrics and Bourdain's own writing, it somehow serves as the last missing note. With its plethora of reminiscences loved ones, it is also a wake, a place where your friends can celebrate your life and work to process unhealed pain.
Bourdain's loved ones are upfront about the personal demons that drove him - the perfectionism and punishing work ethic that fueled his success but shattered both of his marriages. Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, the second wife, is outspoken about how her ex-husband's brutal schedule of traveling 250 days a year prevented him from spending time with her and their daughter. Bourdain's friend David Chang, a restaurateur, also recounts how Bourdain could be hurtful at times, projecting his own frustrations onto others. At one point in their relationship, Bourdain told Chang that he couldn't be a good father. Nudged by Neville, Chang concludes that the comment comes from Bourdain's own past: Bourdain was aware of his own shortcomings as a father.
