From a larger-than-life Parts Unknown poster above the mantle, Tony stared down at me through thick black Persols. I was struggling to write about having had the best job in the world, more than a decade of eating, drinking and traveling with Anthony Bourdain. Also, the part about Tony killing himself.
Fresh out of school I’d got a job logging tapes on Tony’s first show, A Cook’s Tour. Back then nobody knew who he was. Season after season the shows, the adventures, the stakes and Tony’s fame had all grown exponentially. By the end we’d filmed with President Obama at a noodle shop in Vietnam and Tony had practically been ordained a saint. He’d inspired people he never met to be curious and expand their world. For me Tony hadn’t just been a role model, he’d been my life’s work.
Suddenly rudderless, I embarked on a two year long downward spiral, solo day drinking while wallowing in a state of pathetic self-pity. I desperately needed to do something. But I couldn’t go back to TV, Tony wouldn’t be there. I needed another option. Most people who set out to write a memoir aren’t afforded a recording of the key moments in their lives. But I had 100 episodes of TV and countless hours of raw footage from my 80 trips with Tony. What went on behind the scenes was far more screwed up, magnificent and absurd than the edited for TV version. While the pandemic raged outside, I sat blinds drawn. My eyes, bloodshot and glued to the TV, watched Tony play back in real time. Memories and emotions I’d been trying to avoid flickered on screen and into the otherwise darkened room.
Tony was complicated, hard to be around, and painful to be away from. Intellectually stimulating beyond compare, he was also frustrating, difficult, and even terrifying at times. But being pulled along in Tony’s supersonic wake meant everything in life was heightened. Even colors were brighter. As fall turned to winter, I’d continued far enough down the rabbit hole it was starting to feel like Tony was in the room with me.
“It’s not all champagne and little feet walking on your back,” Tony complained at a suburban bbq. The 12-year-old he was talking to rolled her eyes and folded her arms. To be fair, the production enjoyed a generous amount of champagne as well as the occasional ashiatsu massage--among other perks--but working on the show was far from an all-expenses paid vacation.
“You gotta make sacrifices to do this,” Tony said, taking a drag of his cigarette. Knowing how it all ended up, his words took on new meaning. I’d torched friends, relationships, most of my 20s, my 30s, endured repeated threats of cannibalism, and an unhealthy amount of stress from constantly walking a treacherous political tightrope. It was also one hell of an adrenaline high. Time code reflected off my pupils as I relived getting caught in a sandstorm on my birthday, winning Emmy awards, and smuggling suitcases full of cash.
“Painful is funny, one of the essential rules of comedy,” Tony said, reclined on a couch. We were supposed to be filming a mock therapy scene but, to my surprise, Tony was genuinely opening up. “The shit that really hurts, your greatest humiliations, they’re funny, you know?”
Writing this book, I decided to follow Tony’s advice and embrace my failures, embarrassing near mental breakdowns and disastrous errors. There were so many to choose from, like the meal scene featuring an endangered Java mouse-deer. Or The time I cried while confessing to the crime of hiring a Paris mime to put Tony in an invisible box. “If you can’t laugh,” Tony used to say. “There’s nothing left to do but cry.
In The Weeds is a candid account of my time traveling with Tony. It’s the story of a TV production gone rogue on a non-stop run fueled by high-octane creativity and recklessness… as well as the inevitable heartbreak required to return home from the adventure of a lifetime.