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It instantly just made people want to ask ten more questions, Neville says.
It became this kind of narrative quicksand.
Before watching your film, I had the question Im sure a lot of other people have.
Anthony Bourdain seemed to lead such a charmed existence.
What made him take himself out of it?
I felt like I could relate to him.
He was a smart, funny ambassador for curiosity.
And so how do we kind of be in the moment with him?
Because there is so much that is funny and exciting.
What I came to realize pretty early on is those threads were there all the time.
RereadingKitchen Confidential, there are passages in that book that are pitch black.
Im just going to regret how much I disappointed people in my life.
He wrote that in 1999.
I was kind of shocked.
Things like that kept coming up again and again through his shows.
He joked about it.
Nobody really understood the depths of that fascination around it.
Itd been there for so long people just assumed, Oh, thats Tony.
He has a black sense of humor.
Theres a mountain pass, and he was drunk.
He was going to drive over the edge of the road.
Tell me about the people you interviewed.Eric Ripertdiscovered Bourdains body in the hotel room in France.
You also interviewed Bourdains wifeOttavia,who seems to have resisted speaking publicly until this point.
And everybody in Tonys life came together.
Nobody else made anything.
Part of it is, I want to tell a story.
I want to feel like itstheauthoritative story, that I would have access to everything.
There was a certain feeling among people in Tonys world that this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
Ottavia says in the film, This is the only time Im ever going to talk about this publicly.
But at least three or four other people said the same thing to me.
There was just this sense of,I need to tell the story.
Were they protective of him?Well, yes and no.
Theres a moment withDavid Changwhere he hesitates to tell a story, and hes like, Fuck it.
He tells the story about what Tony told him about being a father.
[InRoadrunner, Chang recalls Bourdain telling him he was unfit for fatherhood.]
I felt like there was a lot of that,Dont sanctify him.
That was so not Tony.
So weve talked about who participated.
Lets talk about the person who didnt participate.
But you deliberately did not ask her for an interview.
Why?Shesgiven interviews.
I kind of know what she was going to say.
It became this kind of narrative quicksand of Oh, but then what about this?
And how did this happen?
Yes, it would have added a lot of complexity to your job.
Because it would have been painful for a lot of people, honestly, if I had interviewed her.
I felt like Im trying to make a psychological portrait of a persons entire life.
And I just didnt want to be capsized by it.
So I made the call.
Has she reached out to you?Ive never heard from her.
I was reading David Changs memoirEat a Peachrecently.
He goes into Bourdains toxic masculinity circaKitchen Confidential, the sexual relationships that go on around kitchen life.
Chang brings this up in terms of the work Bourdain did to improve himself as an individual.
Weve talked about it.
The women are badasses in that book.
And in a way, I felt like he was being harder on himself than he needed to be.
But Tony himself, I never heard about him sleeping with anybody.
So I dont think theres anytherethere.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
