Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a documentary about the life of chef, writer, and TV host Anthony Bourdain. Through extensive archival footage and talking head interviews his career and personal life is explored from the publishing of his bestselling memoir Kitchen Confidential through the end of his life.
The quality of the footage ranges from pixelated and personal to cutting edge, the content seems to be mostly b-roll from his long television career so the doc kind of plays like a longer, more personal episode of No Reservations/Parts Unknown. As such it is undoubtedly interesting and serves its purpose. But as far as an investigation of the man, conveying who he was, it falls short.
In his memoir and throughout his life Bourdain was not shy in discussing his heroin addiction and the film spends very little time on it given he had stopped using prior to the publishing of his first book. But once an addict, always an addict. An addict may stop using but a lot of the behaviors remain unless addressed, whether true or not the documentary makes it seem as if he did nothing to address it- no therapy, no 12 step program, no CBT, no medication. He replaced his obsession to use with his show, he was a fanatic about its production, described by many of the people that worked on it as a 'control freak'. It becomes clear too that he throws himself into various things, becomes obsessed, some examples in the film are Ju Jitsu and the MeToo Movement as well as each of his two romantic relationships depicted. It's clear his behavior is compulsive. He makes jokes about killing himself and depression frequently, he swings from elation to discontent. It's all very clear yet the film as a whole fails to put the puzzle pieces together and only two of the interview subjects address this directly David Chang and David Choe, who offer wonderful insight but are only in the film for seconds. The title itself is inspired by a quote from Choe in responding to Bourdain's suicide says something to the effect of "He was trying to outrun it. He ran for a long time." and the it here is his unaddressed addiction. For an addict the only outcome unless addressed is jail, intuitions, or death.
So as a film about the man it fails. It fails to reckon with a glaring fundamental fact of his nature. Perhaps this was deliberate, not wanting to define him as an addict, not wanting to classify him. Which, sure. He was a complex guy but it does him and addicts in general a disservice not to grapple with this. Bourdain's suicide, although tragic, is not unique or particularly surprising. Bodies are being put in the ground every day, every hour, by addiction. And there is a myriad of reasons for that but the negligence/romanticism of it in our culture plays it's part. I'm not suggesting the film should diminish his accomplishments or downplay his impact, I'm not suggesting they should blame him, he had a disease, but how he managed that disease(or didn't) was a choice. All the producers and crews he collaborated with clearly feel some guilt, one reflects that he wishes he would have said more to him during his final days when he was clearly upset. Again, sure. But the reality is they were all culpable, all to a greater or lessor degree co-dependent, enabling which was much more long standing and pervasive than the last month or year of Bourdain's life. And this doesn't diminish the tragedy of it or the world's loss of a great figure but it is simply much more complex than the film takes the time to explore and it doesn't seem particularly interested in doing so.
A soft investigation of a man who had a cutting edge.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to HBO Max.
Stream It.
