Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013–2018): Season 12, Episode 6 - Under the Tarp - full transcript
The crew of the show looks back at some of their favorite moments.
[dramatic music]
♪
- You know there's something
unusual about this scene?
What is odd about this scene?
- Holy cow.
This is a deep question.
- It's not a quiz question.
It's not hard to solve.
Look where we are.
We're at this
most spectacular view
overlooking this incredible
lake and these mountains,
and yet, strangely,
we're pointed in the direction
of the lavatory.
- [laughs]
- I mean, I don't know
what your view is.
Mine's of three butt
ugly cameramen...
- Okay, you are...
- And a fuckin' bathroom.
- Amazing. I thought about it
when I came,
but then I thought,
"Okay, obviously
we want to show
the beauty of the back."
I agree with you.
- Let's saddle up.
- All right.
- You ready to pull out,
so to speak?
I'm brimming with content.
So I'm ready any time.
[mellow music]
♪
- "Parts Unknown"--I mean,
the title expresses
the intention of the show.
- "Unknown." The unknown.
And new.
- I don't know what
"Parts Unknown" was.
- "Parts Unknown" was...
- Oh, fuck.
- I can tell you
what it wasn't.
- It's hard to say, because
it certainly wasn't,
in my mind, a food show.
- Yeah, sure, we'll sit at
a table and we'll have a meal,
but really it's about
culture, politics...
- Comedy, action movie...
- Geography, history.
- It wasn't a travel show.
- Adventure, horror.
[rock music]
♪
- [screams]
- You know, I don't know.
It's hard for me to say
what "Parts Unknown" was,
because I was so immersed
in it that it was--I mean,
it was definitely
more than a job.
It was, like, such
an incredible experience.
- "What is 'Parts Unknown'?"
is actually a really easy
question, because it was Tony.
- Oh, yeah. That is--can I say
"tumescent" on CNN?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can.
- I've often been asked the
question, "What was Tony like?"
I feel like it's the first
question everyone asks.
- What you saw onscreen,
it was and is that man.
- That was the magic of Tony,
I think,
is that people
who have never even met him,
they would feel like
they would know him.
- He was this curmudgeonly,
funny dude.
- He said something like,
"If you can't smoke
in a recording studio,
what the fuck
has this world come to?"
- Candid, raw...
- Difficult, funny,
brilliant...
- He was honest--brutally,
at times.
- Is he nice?
He's not nice, but that's okay.
- Even though you felt like
he maybe liked you
and liked what you were doing,
you were very, very,
very rarely ever gonna hear it.
- Did Tony say "thank you"?
For what?
- I remember an event in Lyon,
and it was Tony,
Daniel Boulud and Bill Buford,
and we had gone in and pre-lit
everything to seamlessly move
from place to place.
- And Tony notices the light
that is on over their head,
that it's clearly
not a restaurant light
but one of our lights.
- Oh, nice.
They've lit already.
- And Bill's like,
"Man, your crew's, like,
pretty awesome."
- You have an amazing team.
- And you could hear
Tony say...
- Only pet the baby
when he's sleeping,
as we say in the kitchen.
- "Only pet the baby
when it's sleeping."
- "Only pet the baby
when it's sleeping."
- It's--or you'll ruin him.
- He was a great motivator
in that way.
"Only pet the baby
when it's sleeping."
I should do more of that.
[paper flaps]
- Okay.
All right. Say when.
Good?
I'm sure
I did not write this line.
- His soul was the soul
of a writer,
and I think he was
a beautiful writer.
And I think that kind of,
you know, poetry
and his love
came out through his words.
- Next time you turn off
a news cycle
filled with shouting
bobbleheads,
convinced that America
is devolving
into a moronic inferno,
questioning the greatness
of your nation,
maybe you should come here.
Here are your
purple mountains majesty.
- I think when we really
hit it right,
and why I think it's timeless,
it's Tony's voice.
That's why people responded
so well to it, right?
They wanted to hear what this
man had to say about the world.
- Europeans first reached
West Africa
in the mid-15th century,
bringing with them
the usual things:
an industrialized slave trade,
subjugation,
the rule of the many
by the very few.
- The moment that Tony's voice
actually gets into a show,
all of a sudden,
you have a full picture.
You have the full perspective
of this man
who has an angle, you know?
He knows how
to point up a story.
- So, first question would be,
in your lifetime,
will you be able to visit Yafa?
- He wanted to give a platform
to people
who would usually be ignored,
you know,
who would be forgotten--
people who wouldn't have
a voice otherwise.
He really gave those people
and opportunity to shine.
- He always, like, joked about
magical ponies and unicorns,
but, like, he truly was.
He was like
a fucking unicorn, like...
- Coming into "Parts Unknown,"
in the first season,
there was a real mandate
to make it different.
It was a lot of pressure.
- If you really want to find
something new,
you have to be willing to fully
embrace that feeling of lost,
or "I don't know
what I'm doing,"
and that's terrifying,
anxiety-ridden,
and also the absolute most joy
you can find.
- When we hit CNN
with "Parts Unknown,"
the show really manifested,
truly,
into what it wanted to be.
- Welcome to my life.
Actual content, B-roll,
dick jokes, meal scene--
did I say dick jokes?
Diarrhea.
[calm music]
♪
Where do we come from?
How does it all work?
How far can we go?
What are we, as sentient
humans, capable of?
- And it's funny, man.
It's not until someone's gone
that you really,
really try to understand
what made them tick.
And what made
Tony Bourdain tick?
He talked a lot
about being on the move,
and I think that Tony,
you know,
honestly, like a shark,
needed to be on the move
all the time.
And it wasn't that he was
running from something;
he was always running
toward something.
- Antarctica was, you know,
it was the last continent.
Tony had, I mean,
literally, I think,
been to the rest of the world.
There have been some very
intense logistics
on this show,
but getting a six-person crew
to the South Pole
was one of the hardest.
- Chilly.
- It is a long-ass way
down there.
You know, LAX to, like,
Sydney to Christchurch
to McMurdo Station
to the South Pole--
you know, days of travel.
- My face hurts.
- After this massive,
60-hour journey,
he gets there and says,
"It really is
the ass end of the world."
- And walks away.
- [laughs]
That was worth 60 hours.
- Best line ever.
[engines roaring]
- No, you're kidding me, right?
Take two?
We don't do take twos.
No. I want to see one
of those seals fuck a penguin.
- The show became a vehicle
for him
to meet some of his heroes,
for him to kind of live out
some of his own dreams,
like some of his own,
you know, fantasies.
- I've had something of
a multi-decade obsession
with the Congo.
It's been kind of
a personal dream, if you will,
to travel the Congo River,
and now, for better or worse,
I get that chance.
- There's moments
in this series
where--watching Tony
truly experiencing something
that's, like, life-changing.
- It was an extremely selfish
show. It was very selfish.
He was really out
to please himself,
and in doing so,
I think he pleased
a big audience of people.
[reflective music]
♪
- Frankly, this TV show
has become an impediment
to the smooth operation
of this mission.
We might have to terminate
your command.
- So count--how long do
I have to do this?
[rockabilly music]
♪
- There's this misconception
that directing
is actually telling someone
what to say.
- Attempt to manipulate?
Yes. Direct? No.
- Can we just put a little
piece of green behind you...
- No.
- For ten seconds?
- You were a director
on a "Parts Unknown" episode
because you were directing
everything around Tony,
but you were never
directing Tony.
- So production vehicles
should not park
in front of the restaurant.
Let's let the motorcycles park
in front of the restaurant.
Did you want to be able
to tell Tony, like, you know,
"Could you just--God, could you
get to this point, please?
Because, you know, we really do
want to get to this point."
- It was all freeform. This is
true documentary filmmaking.
- I would have about 15
to 30 seconds
to kind of go
over the main points.
- Just don't say "action,"
don't say "cut."
- They actually said "action"
to me on the last shoot.
They were like, "Action."
No, really.
So everybody was like this
the whole time. It was like--
- Probably don't look at him...
- There were no second takes.
- If it was really important,
you could beg or pretend
to cry.
- Get over it, man.
We'll catch it in post.
- So "stovepiping." Have you
talked about stovepiping?
- What's the definition
of "stovepiping"?
- Well, very much like some of
the questions you're asking.
- Here's some themes.
Here's some ideas you might
want to talk about, Tony.
- "So, isn't this place
da-da-da-da-da-da-da?"
- You didn't get to do that
with Tony.
- Hated, hated, hated it.
- [inaudible]?
- What are you,
stovepiping content now, Jerry?
Is that what's happening?
- No, man...
- Is that what's
happening here, Jerry?
Has it come to this?
I can't even trust you?
- If he got the sense
that you were trying
to sway a conversation
one way or the other
to get him to say something,
it was a wrap.
I mean, it was like,
you get the dagger eyes.
- Or, like,
the inevitable wides,
which essentially meant
that the scene's over.
- Go wide. Want to go wide?
Do you want to go wide?
Yeah, go wide.
- He called it.
- What's that?
- Tony just called it.
[funky music]
♪
- Well, food was
a brilliant device,
because interview can just feel
awkward or formal,
whereas if you share a meal
with somebody,
it opens up so many doors.
- The food that we ate
on the road...
- Yeah, sometimes we got
to eat incredible things.
- This is the number
one question I get at parties:
"Did you eat all the stuff
that Tony ate?"
- It was never awful.
It could be weird.
- Skinned lamb head.
- Like were those sheep balls
really that good?
- Boar innards.
- You may throw up a little bit
in your mouth
while trying to get it down,
but it was never awful.
- I definitely did not eat
all the stuff that Tony ate.
- Mm. Liver sandwich.
That's encouraging.
I offer some to my producer,
and he goes literally running.
- I did not eat all
the weird things Tony ate.
I ate a lot of the things
that Tony didn't want to eat.
- On the rare occasion, Tony
would offer us some treats.
- Helen, do you
like this stuff?
- No, I've never had it.
- There you go, Helen. Come on.
- We're filming a scene at
a pojangmacha,
and they had a silkworm stew.
- She hasn't been here
since she was four years old.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- The crew obviously meant
a lot to him.
Yeah, it was a...
it was a trip
I won't forget, you know?
- We were his best friends.
We were the people that were
with him all the time,
and we, like,
had amazing conversations
about our favorite movies.
We would have a conversation
about our favorite movie,
and we'd try to create an
episode that was based on that.
[techno music]
♪
So we approached each episode
like a singular film.
- We all shared a love
of film and music,
and that stemmed from Tony.
- I think he drew a lot
of inspiration from music.
If there's anything
that's comparable to the way
he worked,
it was punk, essentially.
- This is a guy who had
just an incredible
sort of filmic knowledge base
to draw off of.
- Tony would give us movies
or books,
and we would often
just run with it.
- We all got to, like,
experiment in each episode.
- Did we want to shoot that
in a very controlled,
like something Coppola
would have shot,
or something
from a '70s Italian film?
- You know, we did this trailer
for the French Alps episode,
like a John Wick
movie trailer.
- Next shot is of him
like this going...
Ugh!
- [screams]
- Why would we do--like,
on CNN we're showing this?
- We did things on the show
that were unbelievable.
- But that can get expensive.
- Are we talking about budgets?
Next question.
- What's a budget?
- Tony had no concept
of what our budgets were like.
- Budgets?
- Tony didn't...
- He didn't know
what a budget was.
- No, Tony never thought
about budgets.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- It was--
- No. No.
- Not for a second.
- How much is it?
Is it expensive enough?
- Yeah.
- Oh, yeah!
- You know, the budget
only stayed at a certain level,
but the creative push...
- Was greater.
- It was greater.
- When I first started working
on these shows,
it's essentially a--ah, a case
and a half of gear per person.
This has gradually
changed over time.
- [sighs] We would carry 30
cases of equipment with us.
- The strangest thing
I've ever expensed?
I can't really talk about it.
- Camera bodies, lenses
for said camera,
monitors for the cameras...
- Okay.
Let me just see
how many lines this is.
- You can't necessarily get
a receipt for the goat
you just sacrificed.
- Will CNN accept an endangered
species receipt?
- Scrim Jim kits,
clamp adaptors,
oh, the magic gadget, 240-volt
quick dimmer, a little pillow.
- "Should we really be spending
that much on an alpaca?"
I was like,
"Well, I don't know.
How much does an alpaca cost
in this part of the world?"
- 15-millimeter rods,
19-millimeter rods,
Dana Dollies, um...
gosh, where does it end.
- We brought a lot of stuff
to make it look pretty.
[evocative music]
♪
- I think it was really
about trying to achieve--
accomplish what he wanted.
I mean, he knew
that he was lucky
to have this opportunity
to do these things,
and so we were always trying
to do it within our budget.
♪
- So the Miami episode,
I got one note from Tony.
He's like, "'The Great Beauty.'
Watch it."
[techno music]
- That party scene
in that movie
is absolutely extraordinary
and massive in scale.
- We have a certain amount
of money to make the show,
and that's, like, a high,
high production value,
so, you know, immediately,
the mind's like,
"How are we gonna do this?"
[upbeat percussive music]
♪
- There's a scene with a woman
dancing in "The Great Beauty,"
and so we needed to kind of
articulate this idea.
- Moe, kind of the burliest
of our cameramen, is, like,
directing this, like, dancer
who's dancing in a window.
You know, she's, like,
beautiful, long hair,
and she's, like,
doing this dance,
and it's not quite as, like,
exaggerated as Moe wants,
so there's this shot of,
like, Moe
sort of going back
into the window
with her and, like,
flipping his not-hair,
like, you know, back
and, like,
just doing this whole thing.
- I think it actually worked
pretty well, considering.
- I don't know.
You look at that,
and it's hilarious,
first of all,
but then it's, like, it really
points at the passion, right?
And you look at that--we
actually pulled this thing off.
[techno music]
♪
- Say when, boys.
We're up? Roger?
- Caught in a landslide.
- We're gonna freeze out here
like rats tonight.
- Tony lives, on camera
and off camera,
a magical, magical journey.
And there was chaos swirling
around him at all times.
- We lived and died
with what can go wrong...
- Will go wrong.
Things went wrong.
- Okay.
- On the one side,
you have control.
On the other side,
you have chaos.
And always between control
and chaos is where
the show is moving.
- Sometimes, it collapses.
- Tony, get down.
- [inaudible].
- Went to--
- Political unrest.
- Political--
- Bird flu.
- Then there's leptospirosis,
which is an infection
carried by rat urine.
- I mean, every shoot
had things go wrong.
- I think it was--yeah,
it was Shanghai.
- My heartbeat is, like,
going up right now
even thinking about it.
- We decided to visit
the tallest building in Iran.
- Within a minute or two,
we were completely crushed
by this sandstorm,
obviously ruining the scene.
We're all running inside.
- Onchocerciasis, ooh,
aka river blindness.
- The chance of, like,
a government shutting me down.
- Earthquake, train wreck.
- The whole building starts
moving like this,
pieces of the roof
ripping off.
- Step away from the glass.
- Jaundice, liver function
problems,
and something called "man flu."
- We landed on the ground,
and I met the fixer.
She said,
"Great to meet you guys.
Also, Josh,
everyone has cancelled."
- Oh, and we got
all our gear stolen.
[reflective electronic music]
♪
- There was something
about "Parts Unknown,"
and I think it was just
the nature of the show,
that embraced chaos.
- If there wasn't this element
of chaos and intensity
to the shoots,
then, I don't know,
there just--there was
some intangible energy
that came from that.
- Without a doubt, we succeeded
at the ability
to quickly veer off Plan A
and find our way to Plan F
and make something of it.
That's why the show was good.
♪
- All right, are you up?
Are you filming?
The music has started.
I guess that means it's time
to get all killy
in this motherfucker.
- Borneo is another example
of everything
going absolutely wrong.
Tony's supposed to dispatch
this pig with a big spear.
- They've got a pig stuck
in a wooden, like,
box that looked like it had
never been opened...
- And it's raining some more,
and we're rolling,
waiting on a pig.
[thunder cracks]
- Oh, my God. Where's the pig?
- [inaudible]
- It's coming? Is it arriving
by magical package?
Is it arriving by unicorn?
[drums ringing]
- Someone translate,
'cause he's wondering
what the fuck's going on.
- Tom's on the walkie
screaming,
sitting next to Tony, saying,
"Where's the pig?
Where's the pig?"
I'm up in a totally different
section of the village,
and since it was in the middle
of a torrential downpour,
the pig escaped immediately.
[indistinct chatter]
- Oh, you're joking, right?
[pig squeals]
The pig escaped?
[drums ringing]
- It was so intense.
I don't think I've ever seen
Tony look more pissed,
and when he has
a spear in his hand,
that's not the look
that you want to see.
[thunder rumbling]
- It was pretty awful,
actually,
but fun and awful,
sort of the same thing.
- Where is he now?
- Okay, copy. Thank you.
They caught the pig in a net,
and now they're tying it up,
so it'll be here very soon.
- That's, like,
15 minutes away.
Yeah.
You ever tried to drag a
struggling pig down to a river?
[pig squealing]
- All right, travel minute
right now. One, two, three.
- Ah, the travel minute.
- Travel minute.
- The travel minute essentially
was an extra deliverable
that CNN wanted...
- Almost like a preview
of the show.
- Indonesia. New Jersey.
Asturias. Japan.
- He would basically distill
and encapsulate
a place in a minute.
- The Scottish islands,
one of the most savagely
beautiful places on Earth.
- It was like
his absolute--like
the antithesis
of what he was all about.
- He hated these.
- Tropical wonderland.
The beaches.
Did I mention the beaches?
- Tony was a little hesitant.
- It's only a travel minute.
You can't encourage them
with quality.
- It promotes the show.
It's for us.
It's not, like, a snap-in
that nobody's ever gonna see
except in Romania.
- Here we go. Travel minute.
All nonessential
personnel can leave.
- Set up the shot.
He starts talking
about Uruguay.
This guy comes out
of the background
just dragging
a garbage can.
- I fell in love
with this place.
I fell in love
with it first day.
- Tony's like, "How's that?"
and I'm like, "You know..."
Yeah, I got it,
but in the background,
I got a guy dragging
a trash can.
- Perfect. Yes!
- I got--
- Yes! Those are the kind
of production values
we like, Todd.
- Okay.
- "Perfect metaphor
for these travel minutes."
- Now fuck off. Thanks.
That was it.
- That's what you've been
complaining
about for, like, an hour?
- Yeah.
It's my integrity, man.
- But you phoned that in.
- Yeah, but I still feel
like I'm jacking off a hobo.
[slow synth music]
♪
- Conventions of
television-making
had to leave the room,
and it was actually
really wonderful
to find ways to work
around those parameters.
- The great thing about this
series is that you're given
this unbelievable support
structure to take chances.
[ice cracking]
- Doing the same thing every
week was frightening to him,
and I think it was always
a challenge, like,
can you take this idea,
which may seem shocking,
and actually, you know, convey
it in a very artistic way?
- As long as we could get it
past standards and practices...
- The Tokyo episode is
a great example of that.
- Yeah. I had no idea
what tentacle porn was, so...
- This is the first season
with CNN,
and they were surprised
at what we brought back.
- There was spitting in
the mouth, nipple clamps.
You know, there were
a lot of things that
CNN wouldn't normally
put on the air.
- I think we didn't know
kind of where the boundaries
and limits were.
I think CNN didn't know either.
[light techno music]
♪
- If he thought your shows
were mediocre,
that was the end.
There was no--I think
that was, like, the magic
of the show too, is, like,
it just pushed all of us
to, like, do something weird,
like the Korea episode.
- The camera department
was really given free rein.
- Zach and Todd decided
to come up
with this new camera system.
- So these cameras,
they were very small,
which you'd think would be
great, except it...
- Had to be attached
to a giant backpack.
- We looked like
the Ghostbusters.
- At that point in time,
that's all we had,
but it was breakthrough
for what it was.
- Tony found them innovative.
He was excited about
how it was different.
But, like, you know, he made
some crude jokes about it.
- Those cameras
are too fucking tiny.
These cameras do not get
a lot of respect,
I got to tell you right now.
Do you really need
the glove for that?
No. You know what? It adds
no authority to this process.
- You're up?
- Yeah, 2,500, correct?
- Yeah, 2,500 ISO, 32...
- Oh, right.
- Happy to be back in Italy?
- Oh, I'll talk soon.
Don't worry. I want to have
food in front of me.
- I think shooting-wise,
I always really enjoyed
the solo scenes.
- Oh, fucking hell,
that's good.
- Solo scene is what
we would do
when we ran out of good ideas.
We would put him
in front of food
and hope he would say
something amazing,
but the truth is,
a lot of times,
he'd just talk shit
on whoever was directing.
- Think of all the opportunity
for practical jokes
with the vipers.
Note to self:
buy rubber snake for Jeff.
- Solo scenes with Tony,
they worked,
and it was a fantastic
opportunity for Tony
to just unload.
- I'm not suggesting there
are anal glands
in a chicken nugget, but...
- I mean, here was a guy
in Tony Bourdain,
the master of the monologue.
Man, that guy could talk.
- He was just trying to make us
behind the camera laugh.
- He would kind of deliver
a line
and kind of peer
over the camera
to see what kind of reaction
he would get.
- I hate mascots.
You know they fart
in those suits.
- Like, at one point,
I think one of
the editors said,
"You know,
the camera's moving a lot,"
and I'm thinking, "Well,
it's because I'm laughing."
This guy,
he would start riffing,
and we would just fall apart.
It was amazing.
- It was as close a glimpse
as you could get to our
relationship with him.
- One of the great things
about going to Japan
is Lawson's.
We had, you know, the greatest
intention to go to Lawson's
and eat an egg sandwich,
a little solo meal,
Tony out on the street eating
his beloved egg sandwich.
- We don't talk about
the Lawson's incident,
because it's
an ongoing investigation.
- What is it exactly
about this place
that's got its tentacles so
deep into my heart and my soul?
- The coup de gras,
the golden goose of sandwiches
at Lawson's is the egg salad
sandwich,
the fluffy egg salad sandwich.
It's a masterpiece.
- Where are you? I know
you're around here somewhere.
[gasps]
Wait a minute.
I see potato and egg.
Where's the 100% egg?
Where's the egg salad?
No, really.
Where is the egg salad?
- There were no egg salads
of Tony's preference.
- Five minutes before, there
were, like, six egg sandwiches.
- To be fair,
that was my responsibility.
- And things deteriorated
quickly.
- Where are the egg
salad sandwiches?
- They were in there.
- No, there are potato and egg
salad sandwiches in there.
Potato, ham, and egg.
You couldn't possibly
have bungled that...
- Ooh.
- Could you?
- What can you say?
Sometimes we fuck up.
- It became--
it became frantic.
- I was effusively going on
and on and on
about how I can live
without prostitutes and heroin,
but that the egg salad
sandwiches at Lawson,
this is the one thing
I can't--what
would you call it?
The raison d'être of this scene
seems to have either evaporated
or possibly
never existed, Josh.
- Yeah, I'm--I'm--
- I understand.
I mean, when you want
an egg sandwich
and you expect an egg sandwich,
an egg sandwich
should be there,
so I get it, but...
- I don't ask a lot, Josh.
But really, there's one thing
I do need, Josh.
One thing I need desperately,
and that is uncut, 100% pure,
fluffy pillows of love--
the egg salad from Lawson.
That's why we're here.
- It was why we're here.
- Well, luckily, in Okinawa,
there's a Lawson's
on every other block,
so we have a crew member...
- An island-wide dragnet needs
to be established right away.
What is he gonna...
- He's--
- Is he gonna score egg salad
on the street?
Prior preparation
prevents piss-poor performance.
We're doing an egg salad scene.
Is there egg salad?
Look at this--highly
trained professionals
fanning out
across Naha
in search of egg
salad sandwiches.
And I say good luck with that,
because they're amazingly
popular, and for a reason.
- There was, like, a harrowing
and frantic run down the street
to the next adjacent Lawson's
to try to find
the correct sandwich.
- Is this the egg salad?
- This is...
- Yes.
- This is an egg salad.
- Go for Josh. Go for Josh.
- This is a crushing,
a crushing disappointment.
My heart sank.
My heart sank like a stone.
- We all felt that moment.
I got faith in Josh.
He's got a lot at stake here.
I think that
he's gonna come through.
- Yeah, I got a lot of faith
in him too.
And a lot of faith in Idi Amin
and Present Mobutu,
before they drove
whole nations into the ground.
Because this is a monstrous
abrogation of our relationship
and the trust,
the bond of friendship
and professionalism
that we all share.
I'm not saying I'm disappointed
--more like devastated.
I'm waiting for my man,
$26 in my hand.
- Tony, so, they stopped
packaging
the egg salad sandwiches
in whole containers,
so it's split with
a tuna sandwich as well,
but the egg salad
is still there.
- They're--my eggs
are commingling with tuna?
- Yes.
- You can't actually bring
outside food in there
and put it on their shelves,
and then we'll pretend that
I'm actually finding these.
Was that your hideous plan?
- Well, it wasn't
a hideous plan.
- Okay. Go do that,
and then they'll never know.
- Fantastic.
- So we're paying two
different Lawson's
for the same sandwich.
Oh, look. How fortunate.
I'll take all three of you.
[grunts]
Worst scene ever.
[cash register jingling]
- Your question about,
"Was it fun?"
is, like,
a really good question,
because "fun" is a word that,
like,
I wouldn't think about,
necessarily, for the show.
- [laughs]
Was the job fun? Was it fun?
[tense music]
- I wouldn't call
it fun.
We had fun.
- We were deep into Iran.
- I'm in a bar
in the Philippines...
- And the Basij held us
for a day.
- Filming a cover band.
- 13 years later,
now I'm pinching myself.
- Three beers deep...
- Does having the experience of
your life and of your career,
like, fall under
the category of fun?
- There were moments
of fun for sure.
- Are there any local militias
we can befriend?
- Is, like, playing kickball
your definition of fun?
You know what I mean?
- The back-bending that
the camera guys
and the producers...
- Not that much sleep.
- The constant sort of, like,
"What is Tony gonna think?"
- If that falls into
the category of "fun,"
then the answer is yes.
If your definition of fun is,
like, easygoing
and, like, everyone's smiling,
and, like, having a great time
and, like,
can write home about it,
then no, it wasn't fun.
- You know, when I think back
on those early days
and I do remember that joy and
the laughter and the heartache
and everything
that went on there,
if I need to feel that again,
that joy, I go back,
and when I look at
the Waffle House scene...
- So what I love about
this scene is, again,
that Tony is truly experiencing
something new and unexpected.
- You know what I know?
I don't want waffles
at the Waffle House.
- Bullshit, man.
You have to have...
- Waffles?
- First thing you have:
pecan waffle.
- Really?
[orchestral music]
♪
- You get it in many episodes,
but this one in particular.
That was very,
very authentic Tony.
- You know what "umami"
means in Japanese?
Actually, literally, it means,
"I will
"[...] your [...] for a bite
of that...
- [laughing]
- That burger."
♪
[laughing continues]
[techno music]
♪
- Tony had so many different
sides to his personality.
I mean, he could be tough,
he could be a raconteur,
he could also be
incredibly kind, big-hearted,
and emotional person,
sometimes all in
the same interaction,
which was sort of crazy.
I remember in our
Philippines episode,
Tony joins for a family meal.
- The family scenes were some
of the most magical moments
that we captured in the show.
One of the most
incredible ones for me
was with my grandmother,
a Filipino woman named
Aurora Medina who raised me.
- And this is, I think,
the first Christmas Aurora
has been back in
the Philippines in 40 years.
- After the meal,
Aurora came over to Tony
and started singing
"Edelweiss."
- This is the song
that she sang to Eric
as she was changing his
diapers, I believe, you know?
- ♪ Edelweiss
♪ Edelweiss
♪ Every morning
♪ I greet you
- And everyone
is pretty emotional.
- It was one of the few
moments that I saw Tony,
you know, start to tear up.
- ♪ Edelweiss...
- You can see,
if you look closely,
you can see Tony
totally tearing up.
He's just on the verge of
crying, which he doesn't do.
- ♪ Forever
- Yeah. It was really special
to see Tony that vulnerable
and to see Tony,
you know,
connecting with someone
as beautiful
and, you know,
selfless as Aurora.
[upbeat acoustic music]
♪
- The show itself was, like,
a tremendous gift.
♪
We got to work with somebody
who was incredibly creative,
obviously,
but also let us experiment.
- The amazing thing about it
is that the challenge
has never stopped any of us.
We've met these--
I don't want to say
"we met these challenges."
These challenges have fucking
inspired us to great things.
♪
- He said to Chris and I,
"This show is my legacy."
He said, "That's why
I'm so hard on you guys."
You know, "Every show, I want
it to be better than the next."
♪
- It really was the adventure
of a lifetime.
♪
And that's not making
an excuse
for his dickish behavior,
'cause he was certainly--
could certainly be a dick.
But he was our dick.
♪
- Should we start
drinking now?
♪
- You know there's something
unusual about this scene?
What is odd about this scene?
- Holy cow.
This is a deep question.
- It's not a quiz question.
It's not hard to solve.
Look where we are.
We're at this
most spectacular view
overlooking this incredible
lake and these mountains,
and yet, strangely,
we're pointed in the direction
of the lavatory.
- [laughs]
- I mean, I don't know
what your view is.
Mine's of three butt
ugly cameramen...
- Okay, you are...
- And a fuckin' bathroom.
- Amazing. I thought about it
when I came,
but then I thought,
"Okay, obviously
we want to show
the beauty of the back."
I agree with you.
- Let's saddle up.
- All right.
- You ready to pull out,
so to speak?
I'm brimming with content.
So I'm ready any time.
[mellow music]
♪
- "Parts Unknown"--I mean,
the title expresses
the intention of the show.
- "Unknown." The unknown.
And new.
- I don't know what
"Parts Unknown" was.
- "Parts Unknown" was...
- Oh, fuck.
- I can tell you
what it wasn't.
- It's hard to say, because
it certainly wasn't,
in my mind, a food show.
- Yeah, sure, we'll sit at
a table and we'll have a meal,
but really it's about
culture, politics...
- Comedy, action movie...
- Geography, history.
- It wasn't a travel show.
- Adventure, horror.
[rock music]
♪
- [screams]
- You know, I don't know.
It's hard for me to say
what "Parts Unknown" was,
because I was so immersed
in it that it was--I mean,
it was definitely
more than a job.
It was, like, such
an incredible experience.
- "What is 'Parts Unknown'?"
is actually a really easy
question, because it was Tony.
- Oh, yeah. That is--can I say
"tumescent" on CNN?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can.
- I've often been asked the
question, "What was Tony like?"
I feel like it's the first
question everyone asks.
- What you saw onscreen,
it was and is that man.
- That was the magic of Tony,
I think,
is that people
who have never even met him,
they would feel like
they would know him.
- He was this curmudgeonly,
funny dude.
- He said something like,
"If you can't smoke
in a recording studio,
what the fuck
has this world come to?"
- Candid, raw...
- Difficult, funny,
brilliant...
- He was honest--brutally,
at times.
- Is he nice?
He's not nice, but that's okay.
- Even though you felt like
he maybe liked you
and liked what you were doing,
you were very, very,
very rarely ever gonna hear it.
- Did Tony say "thank you"?
For what?
- I remember an event in Lyon,
and it was Tony,
Daniel Boulud and Bill Buford,
and we had gone in and pre-lit
everything to seamlessly move
from place to place.
- And Tony notices the light
that is on over their head,
that it's clearly
not a restaurant light
but one of our lights.
- Oh, nice.
They've lit already.
- And Bill's like,
"Man, your crew's, like,
pretty awesome."
- You have an amazing team.
- And you could hear
Tony say...
- Only pet the baby
when he's sleeping,
as we say in the kitchen.
- "Only pet the baby
when it's sleeping."
- "Only pet the baby
when it's sleeping."
- It's--or you'll ruin him.
- He was a great motivator
in that way.
"Only pet the baby
when it's sleeping."
I should do more of that.
[paper flaps]
- Okay.
All right. Say when.
Good?
I'm sure
I did not write this line.
- His soul was the soul
of a writer,
and I think he was
a beautiful writer.
And I think that kind of,
you know, poetry
and his love
came out through his words.
- Next time you turn off
a news cycle
filled with shouting
bobbleheads,
convinced that America
is devolving
into a moronic inferno,
questioning the greatness
of your nation,
maybe you should come here.
Here are your
purple mountains majesty.
- I think when we really
hit it right,
and why I think it's timeless,
it's Tony's voice.
That's why people responded
so well to it, right?
They wanted to hear what this
man had to say about the world.
- Europeans first reached
West Africa
in the mid-15th century,
bringing with them
the usual things:
an industrialized slave trade,
subjugation,
the rule of the many
by the very few.
- The moment that Tony's voice
actually gets into a show,
all of a sudden,
you have a full picture.
You have the full perspective
of this man
who has an angle, you know?
He knows how
to point up a story.
- So, first question would be,
in your lifetime,
will you be able to visit Yafa?
- He wanted to give a platform
to people
who would usually be ignored,
you know,
who would be forgotten--
people who wouldn't have
a voice otherwise.
He really gave those people
and opportunity to shine.
- He always, like, joked about
magical ponies and unicorns,
but, like, he truly was.
He was like
a fucking unicorn, like...
- Coming into "Parts Unknown,"
in the first season,
there was a real mandate
to make it different.
It was a lot of pressure.
- If you really want to find
something new,
you have to be willing to fully
embrace that feeling of lost,
or "I don't know
what I'm doing,"
and that's terrifying,
anxiety-ridden,
and also the absolute most joy
you can find.
- When we hit CNN
with "Parts Unknown,"
the show really manifested,
truly,
into what it wanted to be.
- Welcome to my life.
Actual content, B-roll,
dick jokes, meal scene--
did I say dick jokes?
Diarrhea.
[calm music]
♪
Where do we come from?
How does it all work?
How far can we go?
What are we, as sentient
humans, capable of?
- And it's funny, man.
It's not until someone's gone
that you really,
really try to understand
what made them tick.
And what made
Tony Bourdain tick?
He talked a lot
about being on the move,
and I think that Tony,
you know,
honestly, like a shark,
needed to be on the move
all the time.
And it wasn't that he was
running from something;
he was always running
toward something.
- Antarctica was, you know,
it was the last continent.
Tony had, I mean,
literally, I think,
been to the rest of the world.
There have been some very
intense logistics
on this show,
but getting a six-person crew
to the South Pole
was one of the hardest.
- Chilly.
- It is a long-ass way
down there.
You know, LAX to, like,
Sydney to Christchurch
to McMurdo Station
to the South Pole--
you know, days of travel.
- My face hurts.
- After this massive,
60-hour journey,
he gets there and says,
"It really is
the ass end of the world."
- And walks away.
- [laughs]
That was worth 60 hours.
- Best line ever.
[engines roaring]
- No, you're kidding me, right?
Take two?
We don't do take twos.
No. I want to see one
of those seals fuck a penguin.
- The show became a vehicle
for him
to meet some of his heroes,
for him to kind of live out
some of his own dreams,
like some of his own,
you know, fantasies.
- I've had something of
a multi-decade obsession
with the Congo.
It's been kind of
a personal dream, if you will,
to travel the Congo River,
and now, for better or worse,
I get that chance.
- There's moments
in this series
where--watching Tony
truly experiencing something
that's, like, life-changing.
- It was an extremely selfish
show. It was very selfish.
He was really out
to please himself,
and in doing so,
I think he pleased
a big audience of people.
[reflective music]
♪
- Frankly, this TV show
has become an impediment
to the smooth operation
of this mission.
We might have to terminate
your command.
- So count--how long do
I have to do this?
[rockabilly music]
♪
- There's this misconception
that directing
is actually telling someone
what to say.
- Attempt to manipulate?
Yes. Direct? No.
- Can we just put a little
piece of green behind you...
- No.
- For ten seconds?
- You were a director
on a "Parts Unknown" episode
because you were directing
everything around Tony,
but you were never
directing Tony.
- So production vehicles
should not park
in front of the restaurant.
Let's let the motorcycles park
in front of the restaurant.
Did you want to be able
to tell Tony, like, you know,
"Could you just--God, could you
get to this point, please?
Because, you know, we really do
want to get to this point."
- It was all freeform. This is
true documentary filmmaking.
- I would have about 15
to 30 seconds
to kind of go
over the main points.
- Just don't say "action,"
don't say "cut."
- They actually said "action"
to me on the last shoot.
They were like, "Action."
No, really.
So everybody was like this
the whole time. It was like--
- Probably don't look at him...
- There were no second takes.
- If it was really important,
you could beg or pretend
to cry.
- Get over it, man.
We'll catch it in post.
- So "stovepiping." Have you
talked about stovepiping?
- What's the definition
of "stovepiping"?
- Well, very much like some of
the questions you're asking.
- Here's some themes.
Here's some ideas you might
want to talk about, Tony.
- "So, isn't this place
da-da-da-da-da-da-da?"
- You didn't get to do that
with Tony.
- Hated, hated, hated it.
- [inaudible]?
- What are you,
stovepiping content now, Jerry?
Is that what's happening?
- No, man...
- Is that what's
happening here, Jerry?
Has it come to this?
I can't even trust you?
- If he got the sense
that you were trying
to sway a conversation
one way or the other
to get him to say something,
it was a wrap.
I mean, it was like,
you get the dagger eyes.
- Or, like,
the inevitable wides,
which essentially meant
that the scene's over.
- Go wide. Want to go wide?
Do you want to go wide?
Yeah, go wide.
- He called it.
- What's that?
- Tony just called it.
[funky music]
♪
- Well, food was
a brilliant device,
because interview can just feel
awkward or formal,
whereas if you share a meal
with somebody,
it opens up so many doors.
- The food that we ate
on the road...
- Yeah, sometimes we got
to eat incredible things.
- This is the number
one question I get at parties:
"Did you eat all the stuff
that Tony ate?"
- It was never awful.
It could be weird.
- Skinned lamb head.
- Like were those sheep balls
really that good?
- Boar innards.
- You may throw up a little bit
in your mouth
while trying to get it down,
but it was never awful.
- I definitely did not eat
all the stuff that Tony ate.
- Mm. Liver sandwich.
That's encouraging.
I offer some to my producer,
and he goes literally running.
- I did not eat all
the weird things Tony ate.
I ate a lot of the things
that Tony didn't want to eat.
- On the rare occasion, Tony
would offer us some treats.
- Helen, do you
like this stuff?
- No, I've never had it.
- There you go, Helen. Come on.
- We're filming a scene at
a pojangmacha,
and they had a silkworm stew.
- She hasn't been here
since she was four years old.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- The crew obviously meant
a lot to him.
Yeah, it was a...
it was a trip
I won't forget, you know?
- We were his best friends.
We were the people that were
with him all the time,
and we, like,
had amazing conversations
about our favorite movies.
We would have a conversation
about our favorite movie,
and we'd try to create an
episode that was based on that.
[techno music]
♪
So we approached each episode
like a singular film.
- We all shared a love
of film and music,
and that stemmed from Tony.
- I think he drew a lot
of inspiration from music.
If there's anything
that's comparable to the way
he worked,
it was punk, essentially.
- This is a guy who had
just an incredible
sort of filmic knowledge base
to draw off of.
- Tony would give us movies
or books,
and we would often
just run with it.
- We all got to, like,
experiment in each episode.
- Did we want to shoot that
in a very controlled,
like something Coppola
would have shot,
or something
from a '70s Italian film?
- You know, we did this trailer
for the French Alps episode,
like a John Wick
movie trailer.
- Next shot is of him
like this going...
Ugh!
- [screams]
- Why would we do--like,
on CNN we're showing this?
- We did things on the show
that were unbelievable.
- But that can get expensive.
- Are we talking about budgets?
Next question.
- What's a budget?
- Tony had no concept
of what our budgets were like.
- Budgets?
- Tony didn't...
- He didn't know
what a budget was.
- No, Tony never thought
about budgets.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- It was--
- No. No.
- Not for a second.
- How much is it?
Is it expensive enough?
- Yeah.
- Oh, yeah!
- You know, the budget
only stayed at a certain level,
but the creative push...
- Was greater.
- It was greater.
- When I first started working
on these shows,
it's essentially a--ah, a case
and a half of gear per person.
This has gradually
changed over time.
- [sighs] We would carry 30
cases of equipment with us.
- The strangest thing
I've ever expensed?
I can't really talk about it.
- Camera bodies, lenses
for said camera,
monitors for the cameras...
- Okay.
Let me just see
how many lines this is.
- You can't necessarily get
a receipt for the goat
you just sacrificed.
- Will CNN accept an endangered
species receipt?
- Scrim Jim kits,
clamp adaptors,
oh, the magic gadget, 240-volt
quick dimmer, a little pillow.
- "Should we really be spending
that much on an alpaca?"
I was like,
"Well, I don't know.
How much does an alpaca cost
in this part of the world?"
- 15-millimeter rods,
19-millimeter rods,
Dana Dollies, um...
gosh, where does it end.
- We brought a lot of stuff
to make it look pretty.
[evocative music]
♪
- I think it was really
about trying to achieve--
accomplish what he wanted.
I mean, he knew
that he was lucky
to have this opportunity
to do these things,
and so we were always trying
to do it within our budget.
♪
- So the Miami episode,
I got one note from Tony.
He's like, "'The Great Beauty.'
Watch it."
[techno music]
- That party scene
in that movie
is absolutely extraordinary
and massive in scale.
- We have a certain amount
of money to make the show,
and that's, like, a high,
high production value,
so, you know, immediately,
the mind's like,
"How are we gonna do this?"
[upbeat percussive music]
♪
- There's a scene with a woman
dancing in "The Great Beauty,"
and so we needed to kind of
articulate this idea.
- Moe, kind of the burliest
of our cameramen, is, like,
directing this, like, dancer
who's dancing in a window.
You know, she's, like,
beautiful, long hair,
and she's, like,
doing this dance,
and it's not quite as, like,
exaggerated as Moe wants,
so there's this shot of,
like, Moe
sort of going back
into the window
with her and, like,
flipping his not-hair,
like, you know, back
and, like,
just doing this whole thing.
- I think it actually worked
pretty well, considering.
- I don't know.
You look at that,
and it's hilarious,
first of all,
but then it's, like, it really
points at the passion, right?
And you look at that--we
actually pulled this thing off.
[techno music]
♪
- Say when, boys.
We're up? Roger?
- Caught in a landslide.
- We're gonna freeze out here
like rats tonight.
- Tony lives, on camera
and off camera,
a magical, magical journey.
And there was chaos swirling
around him at all times.
- We lived and died
with what can go wrong...
- Will go wrong.
Things went wrong.
- Okay.
- On the one side,
you have control.
On the other side,
you have chaos.
And always between control
and chaos is where
the show is moving.
- Sometimes, it collapses.
- Tony, get down.
- [inaudible].
- Went to--
- Political unrest.
- Political--
- Bird flu.
- Then there's leptospirosis,
which is an infection
carried by rat urine.
- I mean, every shoot
had things go wrong.
- I think it was--yeah,
it was Shanghai.
- My heartbeat is, like,
going up right now
even thinking about it.
- We decided to visit
the tallest building in Iran.
- Within a minute or two,
we were completely crushed
by this sandstorm,
obviously ruining the scene.
We're all running inside.
- Onchocerciasis, ooh,
aka river blindness.
- The chance of, like,
a government shutting me down.
- Earthquake, train wreck.
- The whole building starts
moving like this,
pieces of the roof
ripping off.
- Step away from the glass.
- Jaundice, liver function
problems,
and something called "man flu."
- We landed on the ground,
and I met the fixer.
She said,
"Great to meet you guys.
Also, Josh,
everyone has cancelled."
- Oh, and we got
all our gear stolen.
[reflective electronic music]
♪
- There was something
about "Parts Unknown,"
and I think it was just
the nature of the show,
that embraced chaos.
- If there wasn't this element
of chaos and intensity
to the shoots,
then, I don't know,
there just--there was
some intangible energy
that came from that.
- Without a doubt, we succeeded
at the ability
to quickly veer off Plan A
and find our way to Plan F
and make something of it.
That's why the show was good.
♪
- All right, are you up?
Are you filming?
The music has started.
I guess that means it's time
to get all killy
in this motherfucker.
- Borneo is another example
of everything
going absolutely wrong.
Tony's supposed to dispatch
this pig with a big spear.
- They've got a pig stuck
in a wooden, like,
box that looked like it had
never been opened...
- And it's raining some more,
and we're rolling,
waiting on a pig.
[thunder cracks]
- Oh, my God. Where's the pig?
- [inaudible]
- It's coming? Is it arriving
by magical package?
Is it arriving by unicorn?
[drums ringing]
- Someone translate,
'cause he's wondering
what the fuck's going on.
- Tom's on the walkie
screaming,
sitting next to Tony, saying,
"Where's the pig?
Where's the pig?"
I'm up in a totally different
section of the village,
and since it was in the middle
of a torrential downpour,
the pig escaped immediately.
[indistinct chatter]
- Oh, you're joking, right?
[pig squeals]
The pig escaped?
[drums ringing]
- It was so intense.
I don't think I've ever seen
Tony look more pissed,
and when he has
a spear in his hand,
that's not the look
that you want to see.
[thunder rumbling]
- It was pretty awful,
actually,
but fun and awful,
sort of the same thing.
- Where is he now?
- Okay, copy. Thank you.
They caught the pig in a net,
and now they're tying it up,
so it'll be here very soon.
- That's, like,
15 minutes away.
Yeah.
You ever tried to drag a
struggling pig down to a river?
[pig squealing]
- All right, travel minute
right now. One, two, three.
- Ah, the travel minute.
- Travel minute.
- The travel minute essentially
was an extra deliverable
that CNN wanted...
- Almost like a preview
of the show.
- Indonesia. New Jersey.
Asturias. Japan.
- He would basically distill
and encapsulate
a place in a minute.
- The Scottish islands,
one of the most savagely
beautiful places on Earth.
- It was like
his absolute--like
the antithesis
of what he was all about.
- He hated these.
- Tropical wonderland.
The beaches.
Did I mention the beaches?
- Tony was a little hesitant.
- It's only a travel minute.
You can't encourage them
with quality.
- It promotes the show.
It's for us.
It's not, like, a snap-in
that nobody's ever gonna see
except in Romania.
- Here we go. Travel minute.
All nonessential
personnel can leave.
- Set up the shot.
He starts talking
about Uruguay.
This guy comes out
of the background
just dragging
a garbage can.
- I fell in love
with this place.
I fell in love
with it first day.
- Tony's like, "How's that?"
and I'm like, "You know..."
Yeah, I got it,
but in the background,
I got a guy dragging
a trash can.
- Perfect. Yes!
- I got--
- Yes! Those are the kind
of production values
we like, Todd.
- Okay.
- "Perfect metaphor
for these travel minutes."
- Now fuck off. Thanks.
That was it.
- That's what you've been
complaining
about for, like, an hour?
- Yeah.
It's my integrity, man.
- But you phoned that in.
- Yeah, but I still feel
like I'm jacking off a hobo.
[slow synth music]
♪
- Conventions of
television-making
had to leave the room,
and it was actually
really wonderful
to find ways to work
around those parameters.
- The great thing about this
series is that you're given
this unbelievable support
structure to take chances.
[ice cracking]
- Doing the same thing every
week was frightening to him,
and I think it was always
a challenge, like,
can you take this idea,
which may seem shocking,
and actually, you know, convey
it in a very artistic way?
- As long as we could get it
past standards and practices...
- The Tokyo episode is
a great example of that.
- Yeah. I had no idea
what tentacle porn was, so...
- This is the first season
with CNN,
and they were surprised
at what we brought back.
- There was spitting in
the mouth, nipple clamps.
You know, there were
a lot of things that
CNN wouldn't normally
put on the air.
- I think we didn't know
kind of where the boundaries
and limits were.
I think CNN didn't know either.
[light techno music]
♪
- If he thought your shows
were mediocre,
that was the end.
There was no--I think
that was, like, the magic
of the show too, is, like,
it just pushed all of us
to, like, do something weird,
like the Korea episode.
- The camera department
was really given free rein.
- Zach and Todd decided
to come up
with this new camera system.
- So these cameras,
they were very small,
which you'd think would be
great, except it...
- Had to be attached
to a giant backpack.
- We looked like
the Ghostbusters.
- At that point in time,
that's all we had,
but it was breakthrough
for what it was.
- Tony found them innovative.
He was excited about
how it was different.
But, like, you know, he made
some crude jokes about it.
- Those cameras
are too fucking tiny.
These cameras do not get
a lot of respect,
I got to tell you right now.
Do you really need
the glove for that?
No. You know what? It adds
no authority to this process.
- You're up?
- Yeah, 2,500, correct?
- Yeah, 2,500 ISO, 32...
- Oh, right.
- Happy to be back in Italy?
- Oh, I'll talk soon.
Don't worry. I want to have
food in front of me.
- I think shooting-wise,
I always really enjoyed
the solo scenes.
- Oh, fucking hell,
that's good.
- Solo scene is what
we would do
when we ran out of good ideas.
We would put him
in front of food
and hope he would say
something amazing,
but the truth is,
a lot of times,
he'd just talk shit
on whoever was directing.
- Think of all the opportunity
for practical jokes
with the vipers.
Note to self:
buy rubber snake for Jeff.
- Solo scenes with Tony,
they worked,
and it was a fantastic
opportunity for Tony
to just unload.
- I'm not suggesting there
are anal glands
in a chicken nugget, but...
- I mean, here was a guy
in Tony Bourdain,
the master of the monologue.
Man, that guy could talk.
- He was just trying to make us
behind the camera laugh.
- He would kind of deliver
a line
and kind of peer
over the camera
to see what kind of reaction
he would get.
- I hate mascots.
You know they fart
in those suits.
- Like, at one point,
I think one of
the editors said,
"You know,
the camera's moving a lot,"
and I'm thinking, "Well,
it's because I'm laughing."
This guy,
he would start riffing,
and we would just fall apart.
It was amazing.
- It was as close a glimpse
as you could get to our
relationship with him.
- One of the great things
about going to Japan
is Lawson's.
We had, you know, the greatest
intention to go to Lawson's
and eat an egg sandwich,
a little solo meal,
Tony out on the street eating
his beloved egg sandwich.
- We don't talk about
the Lawson's incident,
because it's
an ongoing investigation.
- What is it exactly
about this place
that's got its tentacles so
deep into my heart and my soul?
- The coup de gras,
the golden goose of sandwiches
at Lawson's is the egg salad
sandwich,
the fluffy egg salad sandwich.
It's a masterpiece.
- Where are you? I know
you're around here somewhere.
[gasps]
Wait a minute.
I see potato and egg.
Where's the 100% egg?
Where's the egg salad?
No, really.
Where is the egg salad?
- There were no egg salads
of Tony's preference.
- Five minutes before, there
were, like, six egg sandwiches.
- To be fair,
that was my responsibility.
- And things deteriorated
quickly.
- Where are the egg
salad sandwiches?
- They were in there.
- No, there are potato and egg
salad sandwiches in there.
Potato, ham, and egg.
You couldn't possibly
have bungled that...
- Ooh.
- Could you?
- What can you say?
Sometimes we fuck up.
- It became--
it became frantic.
- I was effusively going on
and on and on
about how I can live
without prostitutes and heroin,
but that the egg salad
sandwiches at Lawson,
this is the one thing
I can't--what
would you call it?
The raison d'être of this scene
seems to have either evaporated
or possibly
never existed, Josh.
- Yeah, I'm--I'm--
- I understand.
I mean, when you want
an egg sandwich
and you expect an egg sandwich,
an egg sandwich
should be there,
so I get it, but...
- I don't ask a lot, Josh.
But really, there's one thing
I do need, Josh.
One thing I need desperately,
and that is uncut, 100% pure,
fluffy pillows of love--
the egg salad from Lawson.
That's why we're here.
- It was why we're here.
- Well, luckily, in Okinawa,
there's a Lawson's
on every other block,
so we have a crew member...
- An island-wide dragnet needs
to be established right away.
What is he gonna...
- He's--
- Is he gonna score egg salad
on the street?
Prior preparation
prevents piss-poor performance.
We're doing an egg salad scene.
Is there egg salad?
Look at this--highly
trained professionals
fanning out
across Naha
in search of egg
salad sandwiches.
And I say good luck with that,
because they're amazingly
popular, and for a reason.
- There was, like, a harrowing
and frantic run down the street
to the next adjacent Lawson's
to try to find
the correct sandwich.
- Is this the egg salad?
- This is...
- Yes.
- This is an egg salad.
- Go for Josh. Go for Josh.
- This is a crushing,
a crushing disappointment.
My heart sank.
My heart sank like a stone.
- We all felt that moment.
I got faith in Josh.
He's got a lot at stake here.
I think that
he's gonna come through.
- Yeah, I got a lot of faith
in him too.
And a lot of faith in Idi Amin
and Present Mobutu,
before they drove
whole nations into the ground.
Because this is a monstrous
abrogation of our relationship
and the trust,
the bond of friendship
and professionalism
that we all share.
I'm not saying I'm disappointed
--more like devastated.
I'm waiting for my man,
$26 in my hand.
- Tony, so, they stopped
packaging
the egg salad sandwiches
in whole containers,
so it's split with
a tuna sandwich as well,
but the egg salad
is still there.
- They're--my eggs
are commingling with tuna?
- Yes.
- You can't actually bring
outside food in there
and put it on their shelves,
and then we'll pretend that
I'm actually finding these.
Was that your hideous plan?
- Well, it wasn't
a hideous plan.
- Okay. Go do that,
and then they'll never know.
- Fantastic.
- So we're paying two
different Lawson's
for the same sandwich.
Oh, look. How fortunate.
I'll take all three of you.
[grunts]
Worst scene ever.
[cash register jingling]
- Your question about,
"Was it fun?"
is, like,
a really good question,
because "fun" is a word that,
like,
I wouldn't think about,
necessarily, for the show.
- [laughs]
Was the job fun? Was it fun?
[tense music]
- I wouldn't call
it fun.
We had fun.
- We were deep into Iran.
- I'm in a bar
in the Philippines...
- And the Basij held us
for a day.
- Filming a cover band.
- 13 years later,
now I'm pinching myself.
- Three beers deep...
- Does having the experience of
your life and of your career,
like, fall under
the category of fun?
- There were moments
of fun for sure.
- Are there any local militias
we can befriend?
- Is, like, playing kickball
your definition of fun?
You know what I mean?
- The back-bending that
the camera guys
and the producers...
- Not that much sleep.
- The constant sort of, like,
"What is Tony gonna think?"
- If that falls into
the category of "fun,"
then the answer is yes.
If your definition of fun is,
like, easygoing
and, like, everyone's smiling,
and, like, having a great time
and, like,
can write home about it,
then no, it wasn't fun.
- You know, when I think back
on those early days
and I do remember that joy and
the laughter and the heartache
and everything
that went on there,
if I need to feel that again,
that joy, I go back,
and when I look at
the Waffle House scene...
- So what I love about
this scene is, again,
that Tony is truly experiencing
something new and unexpected.
- You know what I know?
I don't want waffles
at the Waffle House.
- Bullshit, man.
You have to have...
- Waffles?
- First thing you have:
pecan waffle.
- Really?
[orchestral music]
♪
- You get it in many episodes,
but this one in particular.
That was very,
very authentic Tony.
- You know what "umami"
means in Japanese?
Actually, literally, it means,
"I will
"[...] your [...] for a bite
of that...
- [laughing]
- That burger."
♪
[laughing continues]
[techno music]
♪
- Tony had so many different
sides to his personality.
I mean, he could be tough,
he could be a raconteur,
he could also be
incredibly kind, big-hearted,
and emotional person,
sometimes all in
the same interaction,
which was sort of crazy.
I remember in our
Philippines episode,
Tony joins for a family meal.
- The family scenes were some
of the most magical moments
that we captured in the show.
One of the most
incredible ones for me
was with my grandmother,
a Filipino woman named
Aurora Medina who raised me.
- And this is, I think,
the first Christmas Aurora
has been back in
the Philippines in 40 years.
- After the meal,
Aurora came over to Tony
and started singing
"Edelweiss."
- This is the song
that she sang to Eric
as she was changing his
diapers, I believe, you know?
- ♪ Edelweiss
♪ Edelweiss
♪ Every morning
♪ I greet you
- And everyone
is pretty emotional.
- It was one of the few
moments that I saw Tony,
you know, start to tear up.
- ♪ Edelweiss...
- You can see,
if you look closely,
you can see Tony
totally tearing up.
He's just on the verge of
crying, which he doesn't do.
- ♪ Forever
- Yeah. It was really special
to see Tony that vulnerable
and to see Tony,
you know,
connecting with someone
as beautiful
and, you know,
selfless as Aurora.
[upbeat acoustic music]
♪
- The show itself was, like,
a tremendous gift.
♪
We got to work with somebody
who was incredibly creative,
obviously,
but also let us experiment.
- The amazing thing about it
is that the challenge
has never stopped any of us.
We've met these--
I don't want to say
"we met these challenges."
These challenges have fucking
inspired us to great things.
♪
- He said to Chris and I,
"This show is my legacy."
He said, "That's why
I'm so hard on you guys."
You know, "Every show, I want
it to be better than the next."
♪
- It really was the adventure
of a lifetime.
♪
And that's not making
an excuse
for his dickish behavior,
'cause he was certainly--
could certainly be a dick.
But he was our dick.
♪
- Should we start
drinking now?