Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Anthony Bourdain’s “Lieutenant”, Laurie Woolever

Transcript

Anthony Bourdain’s “Lieutenant”, Laurie Woolever · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the Safe Space, Dangerous Ideas.
• 0:06
  This is an emotional one today. The dangerous idea that we are exploring is whether or
• 0:13
  not the gigantic appetites of gigantic men doom them. Whether or not they will inevitably
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  be brought down by an excess of romanticism and hedonism and self-expression, whether
• 0:27
  those attributes contain within them the seeds of our own demise, if we're not careful.
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  That was certainly the situation for two of the world's most famous cooks, Mario Batali
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  and Anthony Bourdain, both of whom today's guests worked with intimately for many years.
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  Laurie Wooliver came to New York to be a writer, but she first completed the French
• 0:51
  culinary institute's professional training program. Then, 25 years ago, she was hired as
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  the assistant to the hottest chef in New York City at the turn of the century. It sounds
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  funny to say that, doesn't it? The turn of the century. Mario Batali was his name.
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  After that ended, she later joined Anthony Bourdain's team, really became his own personal
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  long-time assistant. He called her his lieutenant from the beginning of his rise to superstardom,
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  just after he'd gotten his travel channel show right through and riding with him along
• 1:25
  the trajectory of success until his death in 2018. They were together for about a decade.
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  His death hit me particularly hard. It hit many people uniquely hard and I always feel
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  that there's something a little bit sort of self-absorbed about being struck by the
• 1:45
  death of a celebrity as if it hit you personally, but his really did. The fact that it was at
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  his own hand made it galling. The fact that he had what was clearly the best job in the
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  world made it galling. And the fact that he was such a beautifully openly vulnerable romantic
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  made it galling. I'm usually loathe to read things out here in these intros, but it might
• 2:11
  be somewhat useful just to get inside my head because I wrote something the day after
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  Anthony Bourdain died. And anyway, this is what I wrote before we talked to Laurie about
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  her life and Anthony's life and death. I wrote, I know I'm not alone among iconoclastic
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  television hosts to feel a gaping loss today. And I need to say a few words about Anthony
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  Bourdain. He was a man who spent his first 43 years as many of us do, wasting his potential.
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  But then he did what few with the creative spark actually do, he bothered eventually to
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  haul his tobacco-stained hungover body out of bed every morning before dawn, sit his
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  ass in a chair and write. His first book hit my bookshelf like lightning with a distinctness
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  that only a creator too old to give a shit can channel. He was so bullshit free, so
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  articulate, so passionate, a blue collar epicurean, a renaissance man, brimming with insightful
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  inquisitiveness. I was heartened when he got a TV show, even more heartened when it was
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  good, even more heartened when it moved from the travel channel to CNN, winning the impromata
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  of real journalism joining the Big Boys Club, even more heartened still when he won Emmys,
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  a pee body. Here he was, this New York fuck-up who'd never been particularly good at
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  anything, singing his truths with such guts, such heart, such smarts. On the outside he
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  was a jaded cynic, but on the inside he was one of the least jaded and least cynical people
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  on TV. I saw a lot of myself in Bourdain, for good and ill, a man of travel, prone to excess,
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  vulnerable to temptation, a wanderer, a wanderer, impatient with social niceties, skeptical
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  of authority, a globalist, a humanist, a lover of wine and cheese and life, a curious,
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  creative asshole. Best of all, he exuded the instinct that this
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  planet is not a place to be afraid of, that even its shittiest corners are full of delights.
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  That was a ballsy idea to sell to Americans, but he pulled it off because he cared deeply
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  about what it means to live a good life. Apparently he was better at that in theory than in practice.
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  I sometimes wonder when I hear of a hero flicking the switch on the biggest decision anyone
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  can make, extinguishing themselves, exterminating their universe. Whether it might have made
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  any difference, if they'd been able to read eulogies such as this one, in advance, to
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  have seen what an impact they had on strangers all over the world.
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  But then I remind myself that Bourdain had an eleven-year-old daughter, a hit TV show,
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  a great job, all the money he'd ever need, all the first-class flights, the awards,
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  fame, love and respect. The fact that it wasn't enough even to render his life merely bearable
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  is a stark reminder that material success is not happiness. You can be happy in a wheelchair
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  or miserable on a mega yacht. Your hamster wheel is taking you nowhere. All that matters
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  is what's happening between your ears. So long, Bourdain, you brilliant screw up. I just
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  wish you'd enjoyed your mind as much as we did.
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  So that was what I published in 2018, the day after Anthony Bourdain died. It's worth
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  saying that if you or anyone you know is in a dark space and talking about this sort of
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  stuff is tricky or worse still, inspiring in some way. 1311-14 is the number for lifeline
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  in Australia. 1311-14, if you're elsewhere outside of Australia. Look up the number. There
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  are heaps of resources for someone you can talk to. It's an enormous, hugely depressing
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  waste. Even just reading that now takes my gut back to where it was at the time, the sense
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  of dread. Look, if you don't know the backstory, just to sketch it out very briefly, Anthony
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  had a daughter and had an ex-wife and had a new girlfriend who he loved very much and
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  they were a hot thing in the tabloids. So there was a lot of taking of photos and paparazzi
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  and all that sort of stuff of him and this woman who he loved very, very deeply. And
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  the week of his death, he was shooting his television show in France and he had a big
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  meal with Eric Repair, the great chef and they were in the French Alps at a hotel and
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  a story broke about his girlfriend being spotted in Rome at a hotel that he and she
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  had once been turned that was significant to them with another man supposedly. And Eric
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  Repair went into Tony's room the next day and he was hanged. This is not all about Tony but
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  it is interesting to speak with someone who was that close to him and who got had a front
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  row seat essentially to the boy's wristness and creativity that we came to know and love
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  so well. Laurie and her own right has been published in the New York Times and in Vogue
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  and in GQ she and Anthony Bourdain wrote two books together one of them which one of which
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  they were halfway through when when Anthony Bourdain died. She also posthumously published
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  a biography called Bourdain the definitive oral biography. I hope you enjoy this conversation
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  about excess addiction, romanticism, hedonism, travel and what Anthony Bourdain was like
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  as a human. Laurie's new memoir is called care and feeding. Enjoy the one the only Laurie
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  will. I was a little bit lost. I knew I wanted to live in New York. I wanted to be a writer
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  and I knew that I had to find some way to make a living and learn something to write about
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  that was interesting to me. And why why did you want to live in New York and be a writer?
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  Was it because Joan Didian was your hero or like what?
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  I'm not sure I had even heard of Joan Didian at that point. I was very my references were
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  very few. I think I knew that there were the most opportunities in New York. Having
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  come from a small town and having gone to college in a small city, I could see the limits
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  of what was available to me as someone who still needed to figure out what their direction
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  was. And I just knew that in New York, I could try on some different things. I could work
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  somewhere and learn some things. But while I tried to figure out what my path was and it was
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  certainly where publishing was where there was a lot of media. I knew that there would be more
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  opportunities to to start to be a writer than in other parts of the country. You ended up
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  partying quite a lot and consuming a lot of substances. Was that a hedonistic and enjoyable time?
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  It was. For the most part, it was it was a way to tamp down some of the anxieties around my
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  financial situation, around my professional situation, my sort of loveless first few years in
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  New York. It all seemed funny and okay, if I could get quite drunk and maybe smoke a little
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  pod or do a little of someone else's cocaine, it just made all of that feeling. When you're
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  young in New York City, yeah, no, you have to have the friends. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting
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  because the reason I'm interested in this moment is I don't think there's any better place
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  than New York to give expression to that youthful sense of total unimpeded sort of heedless
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  hedonism. Yeah, cheap, cheap, fun. New York is an expensive city, but it can also be a very
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  cheap city because all of the activity happens on the outside. I mean, it happens out of doors.
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  You don't need a car and you can just go to Central Park or at the East Village and you can
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  absolutely. You can stay on the people's cocaine. Right. And the, you know, I lived in the East
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  Village. The bars were cheap cigarettes were $2.50 a pack. You know, it was just you could
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  move a administration. Yes, it was the new deal. This was beef. There was a point in New York state
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  where they decided to make cigarettes $5 a pack. And that was one of many points where I said,
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  that's it. I'm going to quit smoking cigarettes. That's just too much. Now, I think there are
• 11:54
  $20 a pack. But yeah, doubling the price to $5 was a bridge too far until I decided I wanted
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  to keep smoking. And then, I mean, Australia, they're in Australia, they're about $60 Australian
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  dollars, about 40 bucks US a pack, which consequently means that we've just actually crossed over a tipping
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  point at which illicit tobacco is now more prevalent than legal tobacco. Because who would have
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  thought if you price things impossibly high, then an illicit market crops are like market. Yeah,
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  that's incredible. But I do think that it's it probably stopped and there's a lot less
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  cigarette smoking in in the States now than there used to be. And I'm seeing that's the same
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  in Australia. Definitely. Yes. We have one of the lowest lowest rates in the in the rich world.
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  So where did you live in the East Village? Only I asked only because East Third Street between
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  B and C was my home for a majority of my time in New York. So we were neighbors. I was on East
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  Fourth between C and D. C and D. That's really pushing it. Yeah, it was violent at the time you were
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  there. Probably. I mean, I didn't for people who don't know, this is a pretty shate. It was
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  traditionally a shady part of town on the far, far Eastern side of the East Village. Once you
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  run out of numbers, going down from 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, then there's a bit of
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  the Eastern side of Manhattan that shuts out and they have to go into letters and the A. And
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  then you go over to B and it's a bit grungier and you go over to C. Even grungier is still D.
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  I think you reach the end of the world like in the gods must be crazy and you just fall off the edge
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  of pretty much. It was it was dicey. I will say I never really had any firsthand experience with that.
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  I think I knew enough to come home. If it was late enough at night, I would come home in a cab.
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  One time I did, I was walking down Fourth Street pretty late and some guy tried to stick his
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  hand in my pocket and I just sort of turned around and said, hey, what the fuck? And he kind of
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  skittered off. So I was lucky. I think I could have I could have gotten into some dicey situations.
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  It was rough. But I was I was young. I didn't tell my parents what it was like and kind of rolled
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  the dice and nothing bad ever really happened. And so you end up as an assistant to Mario Batali was
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  sort of skipping through pretty quickly, but it will just do a mosaic rather than a chronology here.
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  For people who are not American, who was he at the time? So when I started working for Mario,
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  he was already a chef on television. He had two successful New York restaurants. He had a cookbook
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  and he was just on the cusp of becoming a much bigger well better known chef. He his television
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  presence exploded. He's he's opened more and more restaurants. So he was a very ambitious,
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  very telegenic, very charismatic star chef on the rise when I started working for him. And I was
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  with him for close to four years. And I really saw this this career takeoff during that time.
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  You're with him doing what exactly? Doing what I was his assistant. So which was really
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  dependent on the day was of course doing things like, you know, taking messages for him being
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  that person that people reach out to when they want to speak to him, but he's too
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  busy and important to answer the phone himself. I would do things in his restaurant, Bobo,
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  like check coats, answer phones, receive orders. Sometimes I would be there helping the chefs
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  pick herbs close to the end of the prep period. I did spend about six weeks cooking in the kitchen
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  at Bobo because somebody quit unexpectedly and they needed to fill that space before service.
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  Sometimes I would cook dinner for his children who were quite young at the time.
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  Sometimes I would travel with him. We actually he took me with him to the Melbourne Food and Wine
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  Festival in 2002, which was fun and exciting and also kind of terrible. What terrible?
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  It was really a me problem. It certainly, I mean, Melbourne was an incredible city that is an
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  incredible city, beautiful food, you know, amazing. It was a me thing. I was quite tired at that
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  point of working for Mario and I started the trip with the sinus infection. The Singapore
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  Airlines was the sponsor and so in order for us to take advantage of their generous free
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  airfare, we had to go from New York to Western Europe to Singapore to Melbourne, which is a very
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  long amount of time to be flying three separate flights. That's a long way round. The Frankfurt
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  flight. Exactly. Yeah. And so by the time we landed in Melbourne and I had been
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  popping pills the whole way, thinking if I just take enough pills, I'll just sleep the whole time
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  and that didn't happen. I don't do a business class. I was in alternating business and coach because
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  there were three of us. Mario got the full business ride. They gave us a second business class ticket
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  and then a coach ticket and we had a sous chef with us. So he and I had to trade off.
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  So it was right. I was excited to get to come to Australia. I had never been before. I haven't
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  been back yet, but I very much want to come back. But I was, you know, I was very, by the time
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  we got to Melbourne, I was out of my mind with, you know, taking drugs, drinking on the flight, not
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  sleeping much. And so I never really caught up. And I and Mario was disappointed because I wasn't
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  partying with him and the other guys like he wanted me to. I was just like, I'm going to,
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  I'm going to literally perish. I need to go to bed. So it was the combination of jet lag and hangover
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  and probably lingering drunkenness is not the best feelings. No, no. I didn't, I didn't,
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  I didn't comport myself, you know, in a professional way in the travel part. And so I was kind of sad
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  and, you know, felt like I had wasted this opportunity to go to Australia. So I can do over.
• 18:12
  That's fine. You don't come again. Well, have you? Yeah. Okay. You write that like Mario was,
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  he was not very tolerant of you being a wilting flower or just wanting to just nibble a little bit
• 18:22
  at the edges or be like, he was an all on I think I write. He was like, you hear with me, we're going
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  to have the three courses. We're going to have the bottle of wine. We're going to finish it off
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  with this and that and like, live large. Go big home at home, Laurie. Yes, which at some time,
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  especially at the beginning was wonderful, you know, gave me the opportunity to say it's not my
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  choice. It's my job. You know, I have to eat all this. I have to drink all this. I have to go to this
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  trip club and then go gambling and, you know, it was a lot of fun. And then by the end, I felt very
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  tired of it and ready to have a little more control over how I spent my time.
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  Do you miss it? No, I don't. Not even. I did. I did. No, I did for a long time. You know,
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  after I stopped working for Mario, I did really miss being at the center of things and the social
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  energy and the the access and the power I really felt sad about about walking away from that.
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  But it's been a very long time. And, you know, I've been sober for six and a half years now. And
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  I got my fill long after I stopped working for Mario. I continued to drink and use drugs and seek out,
• 19:32
  you know, wild adventures. And, you know, I got my fill. I had to retire. I retired. Yeah, right.
• 19:39
  That's right. And did that lifestyle continue while you were with Anthony Bourdain or were you
• 19:43
  wanting down by them? Well, some of that continued. By the time I became Tony Bourdain's assistant,
• 19:51
  I had a child. I had an infant when I started the job. So life was necessarily different. But
• 19:57
  once I was able to leave him with a sitter or with my now ex-husband and get out a little bit,
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  I did resume. I did go looking for adventure and excitement and, you know, illicit
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  thrills of all types. So I would not say that most of that didn't happen with Tony. I mean,
• 20:16
  there was very little overlap in any of our sort of partying. But as in that time period,
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  I was looking for ways to get away from family life and, you know, use drugs, drink a lot,
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  but behave like a much younger person. The way you're describing it doesn't sound like you're
• 20:36
  completely dismissive of the appeal. You said I was still looking for adventure and excitement
• 20:43
  and trying to live the life of a younger person. You didn't say I was still trying to feed the
• 20:47
  demons and destroy myself. Yeah, I don't think I saw it that way until it became so apparent to
• 20:55
  me what I was doing and that I was self-destructing. So it took a long time. It took many people
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  saying to me, yeah, are you okay? It seems like you're going a little hard to finally realize it
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  myself and accept it and realize that I need to change my life because I am not increasingly
• 21:17
  steep downward slope here. And are you sure that it would have ended up unmanageable?
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  Or do you think you could have just maintained a life as a functional head and a stick?
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  Goholic. Yeah, I mean, you can use that term if you want, but yeah,
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  over the weekend, the way that many successful people in many fields in places like New York City
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  are. Yeah, I think I've learned enough about myself and my capacity to self-regulate or not,
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  that I don't think that it would have ended well for me. I didn't see a way in which I could
• 21:54
  just continue on the path that I was on because I was drinking more and more. I was more and more
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  unhappy. As the body gets older, I think especially for women, you just metabolize alcohol
• 22:08
  in a less efficient and more sort of painful way. So it's not to say that other people can't do it
• 22:16
  and can't continue to drink moderately and enjoy that for the rest of their lives. For me,
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  I don't think it was, I don't think it was a possibility. I think something, unfortunately,
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  I think I was on a path where something probably terrible would have happened, whether it was a
• 22:32
  step into traffic or get into a car with the wrong person or who knows. I mean, I could make up
• 22:37
  any number of horrifying scenarios, but I'm lucky that I didn't have to test the theory.
• 22:43
  Yeah, yeah. It certainly elevates the risk of something terrible happening, doesn't it?
• 22:47
  I mean, and I'm not talking about moderate drinking. I mean, I'm talking about there being a cohort
• 22:50
  of people, some of whom I know who are extremely heavy drinkers and constant drug users who are
• 22:56
  using cocaine all the time and getting blasted several nights a week who are still fancy high-hat
• 23:04
  lawyers and agents or talent agents or whatever. I mean, God bless. If you can do it and you can
• 23:13
  maintain your health and your job, well, I mean, I want to know how old they are because I do think,
• 23:23
  it does start to catch up with you and you see, I do see people that have continued that
• 23:28
  that lifestyle that are my age or older and it's not cute. I think it's the rare person that can
• 23:37
  that can keep it up at that pace, but you know, you pay the price eventually, don't you? One way or
• 23:42
  another. Yeah. I mean, before we leave Mario Batali, so he was, and ultimately he was me too,
• 23:49
  basically, right? He was accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault of his staffers in a
• 23:54
  pattern of behavior over many years. You got a glimpse of a little bit of that. He was kind of
• 23:59
  handsy with you or like made a remark as you were getting into a car or something. What did you make?
• 24:04
  What happened and what did you make of it at the time? Yeah. So my first day working for Mario,
• 24:11
  we went, we got into a taxi to go shoot a television segment in the middle of Midtown and he got
• 24:17
  into the taxi first and slid all the way over to behind the driver and then said, slide those
• 24:22
  thighs on over. And I just thought, really? Is he flirting with me? Am I really supposed to sit
• 24:30
  close to him? Because he wanted me to sit on his lap, like, what's going on here? You know,
• 24:33
  this is literally my first day of work. And so I just put my bag on the bench seat between us and
• 24:39
  I didn't, you know, sit close to him. But that's what the thighs are over. No, I did not.
• 24:46
  I know. Yeah. I just thought, you know, that really set a tone. And so then a few months later,
• 24:56
  he grabbed my, can I, I can curse, right? He grabbed my ass at work. Very surprised. I was very
• 25:04
  surprised. I was on the phone on a, you know, cordless phone in the dining room of the restaurant and
• 25:08
  he just came in and grabbed my ass and kept going. And I got off the phone and followed him into
• 25:13
  the kitchen and just very quietly, very privately said, hey, don't, please don't do that again.
• 25:19
  And he said, what are you, lesbian? Which is, which is, there was only one explanation
• 25:30
  while you wouldn't want you know, you must be a lesbian. And yeah. And then on that,
• 25:40
  to Australia that I described at some point, we were in business class and I was on the inside,
• 25:45
  he was on the aisle and I needed to use the ladies room and he refused to get up. He was fully
• 25:51
  reclined and he basically made me go straddle him, you know, to get out of my seat and to get back in.
• 25:58
  And, you know, it was not that comfortable. So this was, and that was the extent of it. Those,
• 26:04
  couple of incidents were the extent of my personal direct experience with being touched.
• 26:11
  Well, yeah, it's not entirely true. You stuck his tongue in my ear one time.
• 26:19
  But this was this was the way that he behaved with women and especially with women who were his
• 26:24
  employees or who had little to no power around him. And it was gross. And you know, the women around
• 26:33
  we would joke about it and kind of go, you know, but it was, it was not something that you would quit
• 26:39
  over. It was not something that you would go to a manager over because, you know, it was very
• 26:45
  clear who had the power and it wasn't me and it wasn't any of the workers or wasn't the manager as
• 26:50
  it was Mario. And it was sort of like, well, this is the restaurant business and this is,
• 26:56
  this is how it is. And if, you know, we could go, I could go work in an office, but I like,
• 27:01
  I like this business. So I'm going to stay. And you subsequently declined to speak to
• 27:09
  reporters about your experiences when they, when the reckoning eventually came and they were
• 27:13
  compiling anecdotes about his behavior. I initially said that I wouldn't talk to reporters.
• 27:20
  And Tony Bourdain talked me into speaking with reporters. So I did, I did not at the time,
• 27:28
  I didn't identify myself. I, the reporters knew who I was, but I made it clear that I didn't
• 27:33
  want my name used in these stories because I was very, I was still very afraid of Mario.
• 27:40
  He had a lot of power in the business. And even though I was working for Tony Bourdain and I knew
• 27:44
  that he would protect me, I just felt that I didn't, I didn't feel safe or comfortable having
• 27:51
  my name associated with having betrayed Mario, basically. I just, I had seen the level of black
• 27:59
  bawling and, you know, preventing people from getting jobs and otherwise really messing with
• 28:07
  people's ability to make a living that he had done if he felt that somebody had betrayed him.
• 28:11
  And I just thought, I don't want to put myself in that position. And I had a lot of friends
• 28:17
  who worked, who still worked for Mario. And I felt that there was a set, and I'm not saying this
• 28:22
  is right, but at the time I felt that there was a sense of being disloyal to those friends,
• 28:28
  possibly, you know, threatening their livelihood. It was a very complicated thing. But ultimately,
• 28:34
  Tony said, you know, maybe you don't think your story is, is a big deal and it's not very important,
• 28:38
  but the more people that go forward, the more safe and comfortable it will be for other people to
• 28:44
  come forward. It's the safety and numbers theory. And so I, so I did, I did end up speaking with
• 28:51
  reporters. Was it just a fear of consequence and a fear for the people who were still working for
• 28:58
  Mario or were you also conflicted about his culpability, your complicity, the environment you were
• 29:05
  in, whether or not they were mitigating circumstances? Yeah, that was, that was part of it as well.
• 29:12
  And I write about that in, in my book, this, this questioning of, well, I was there. I made jokes,
• 29:18
  you know, I flirted, I drank a lot, I, you know, had casual relationships with fellow workers,
• 29:25
  you know, I was, I was in this, I was in the mix and I was benefiting from my association with Mario.
• 29:34
  I, you know, it wasn't paid well, but I was introduced to all kinds of editors and food writers.
• 29:39
  I got my foot in the door as a food writer. You know, he would give me concert tickets and CDs
• 29:47
  and bottles of wine. You know, I materially benefited from my access to this very powerful person.
• 29:53
  So I, I wasn't, I didn't feel like a pure outsider. I didn't feel, I didn't feel like a victim.
• 30:00
  I still don't feel like a victim and I feel very uncomfortable with people say, oh, you were a
• 30:04
  victim of Mario. I mean, allegedly, there are people who truly were victimized in ways that I,
• 30:13
  I don't, I don't see myself, I don't see my experience in the same way. So I had a lot of conflict
• 30:18
  around, do I deserve to speak about him? I know what the consequences will be for him and for
• 30:24
  the people who work for him. Do I want to contribute to that, that situation? Someone said, I think
• 30:33
  my therapist said to me at some point, you didn't start this and you couldn't stop it if you wanted
• 30:39
  to. So don't feel like this thing starts and ends with you because it doesn't, you know, you're not
• 30:45
  that important, you're not that big. So, you know, you can make a decision to speak and if that,
• 30:50
  if you feel like that's the right thing to do, but you're not in charge of this, which is a big
• 30:57
  part of also of, you know, recovery culture, 12-step culture is realizing that you're not the
• 31:02
  center of the universe and you don't have control over almost anything except yourself.
• 31:09
  Hence the title of your book. Yeah, yeah, Karen Feade. Do you want to explain that?
• 31:13
  So several years ago, a friend of mine said, I was talking about my career and she just
• 31:19
  listened and said, gosh, you really have made a life out of the care and feeding of difficult men.
• 31:27
  And it just struck me. I had never really put it together in that context.
• 31:33
  And as I write in the introduction to my book, that it really, I was, I was trying in some
• 31:39
  ways to emulate Mario and Tony, you know, these larger than life men who had the freedom and the
• 31:48
  resources to indulge every appetite and to feel that in some ways that they were in control of
• 31:54
  everything and everyone around them. And I realized, you know, as things started to fall apart and
• 32:01
  a lot of different ways that I don't, and I, and I stopped drinking and kind of got a little more
• 32:06
  clear-eyed about life that I don't, I don't have control over almost anything, but I have control over
• 32:13
  how I care for myself and how I care for other people, how I feed myself and how I feed other
• 32:17
  people. I was kind of say one more thing about the title. Someone recently said, Karen feeding.
• 32:23
  Is that sort of an echo of fear and loathing, which of course fear and loathing in Las Vegas being
• 32:29
  Hunter S. Thompson's great piece of work? One of my favorite books is a teenager, yeah.
• 32:33
  And I said no, but I like it, you know, it's sort of like Liz Faire's exiling guyville as a response
• 32:40
  to the Rolling Stones exilent main street. So I'll take it. It's, yeah, Karen feeding. It's the
• 32:45
  opposite of fear and loathing. Fear and loathing, Karen feeding. You mentioned there the ability to
• 32:52
  satiate people's appetites, or you said something about like these two guys who had massive
• 32:58
  appetites and the ability to fill them, which reminds me a little of the quote that you cite from
• 33:03
  the eulogy about Tony Bourdain about having the, not just the, the scale of the person's appetite,
• 33:10
  but the ability to satiate it. Everybody has appetites, and everybody has certain abilities
• 33:16
  to fill those appetites. And when the gods want us, want to destroy a man, they may go to things
• 33:24
  equal. Right. So this is the ability to, yeah, to, yeah. So it's a quote from the New York Times
• 33:30
  book critic Dwight Garner. And he, he was writing a review of a, of a very salacious tell-all book
• 33:37
  about Tony Bourdain, which I had nothing to do with. And he wrote, most human beings have more
• 33:43
  desires than opportunities in life, those whom the gods will destroy are provided with desire and
• 33:50
  opportunity in equal measure. And I just thought that was so perfect, because that is very different
• 33:57
  ways that, that was, that was the case with, with Tony and with Mario. The, you know, bottomless
• 34:05
  appetite and endless resources. Do you have the appetite and not the resources?
• 34:13
  I had, when I was inactive, you know, alcoholism and, and drug use, I had the bottomless appetite
• 34:22
  for drinking and, and using drugs, as much as I could, I wanted to get myself to oblivion.
• 34:31
  And I also, at the same time, you know, big, bottomless appetite for food, you know, a lot of binge
• 34:39
  eating and maybe withholding food from myself. And then later, you know, 12 hours later eating,
• 34:48
  you know, a sub standing up in a drunken fugue state at the, at the refrigerator or a quarter
• 34:53
  of ice cream or whatever. I think that since I've gotten sober, I've, I've learned to,
• 35:00
  to tame that appetite. I, I think I've gotten to a place where I can understand that, you know,
• 35:06
  sometimes enough is enough. You know, I don't drink anymore. I don't use drugs anymore. So I don't,
• 35:11
  and I, I don't believe I have the appetite for those things because I am cognizant of how
• 35:18
  they make me feel, how the way that I use them is, would make me feel if I were to kind of go back
• 35:23
  and mess around again. Yeah, you know, I still love sugary foods and, and I, I'm a perfect day for
• 35:34
  me is sitting on the couch all day watching garbage reality television and eating sugary cereal.
• 35:40
  I don't really let myself do it very often or ever, but seems great, you know, it's a great fantasy.
• 35:46
  I mean, thank God for constraints on one's ability to get whatever you want in a, in a way,
• 35:52
  right? Because when you're talking about getting sober, it makes me reflect, and I also don't drink
• 35:57
  and drink a lot. And, and I, it's not that we no longer have the ability to achieve the things
• 36:06
  that we might want. It's that we've figured out a different way of wanting, to want things,
• 36:12
  right? It's like a meta desire once you're sober, to no long, you know, what what the alcoholic
• 36:20
  wants is to not want to drink. They don't want to not drink. They want to not want to drink.
• 36:28
  Right. Yeah, the trick of being sober is to have some autonomy over the desire itself,
• 36:35
  not merely autonomy over the action or the behavior. And it strikes me that people like
• 36:41
  Tony Bourdain, perhaps, I mean, are they in a certain state of perpetual adolescence where they never
• 36:50
  quite learn to control the wanting? I don't know, you know, I'm very hesitant to get into a place of
• 37:00
  diagnosing posthumously someone like Tony, you know, speaking in very broad terms about people
• 37:11
  who have, you know, deep appetites and insatiable appetites. Yeah, I just think it's a tendency toward
• 37:19
  addiction, which I don't think it's breaking news to say that Tony wasn't addict. You know,
• 37:24
  you wrote what does addiction mean that feels to me like a linguistic cop out in some way or like
• 37:29
  it's total logical, like it's defining away the problem, right? Once you can call something
• 37:33
  an addiction, I feel this about your writing about your own addictions too. It's a little pat
• 37:39
  in a way. It's like as long as I can call an addiction, then I don't sort of have to actually
• 37:44
  wrestle with the amount to which I really got something out of it, the amount to which I loved it,
• 37:49
  the reasons why I was doing it that are not simply because it was addictive, but because
• 37:54
  it was fun. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I mean, I would push back on your critique of my
• 38:01
  writing and say that I think I was quite clear about the fact that it was it helped me kind of
• 38:11
  block out the anxiety. It drinking gave me an excuse or gave me the fuel or gave me the courage
• 38:20
  to go out and be a terrible wife to put it mildly. And then in some cases, it was, you know,
• 38:29
  there was this thing of like the engine starts. It's the only way I can really describe it.
• 38:33
  It's the way that I drink. It was like I have one drink. My engine starts and I'm not going to
• 38:39
  stop the car until I have driven it, you know, over the cliff or into the wall. I never understood
• 38:46
  people who I'll just have one and they actually just have one. I would say I'll just have one,
• 38:52
  but I had one and then I wanted a million. You know, I used to say that to people that if I have
• 38:59
  the if I have three options regarding alcohol, one is to have zero drinks, one is to have one drink,
• 39:05
  and one is to have eight drinks. My preference would be eight drinks first, then zero drinks,
• 39:12
  and then one drink. It's nothing worse than having one drink, getting kind of clammy and a bit
• 39:18
  foggy and a bit sort of sweaty and, you know, out of it, but not, but then you just have to like ride
• 39:24
  it down. Right. Yeah. That seems terrible. Spoken like a couple of heavy drinkers. Yeah.
• 39:34
  No, sorry. Finish the thought about Bourdain. And then, you know, my critique is simply of the
• 39:39
  over the overly diagnostic way in which people in recovery can analyze what are fundamentally
• 39:49
  really complicated nature, you know, aspects of the human condition. Would you do articulate
• 39:55
  a very well in the book in terms of the writing of the book, but not in this conversation.
• 40:02
  Not satisfied. Okay. Well, you know, again, I, I'm hesitant to diagnose Bourdain beyond saying,
• 40:13
  you know, the things that he said about himself, which were that he was a heroin addict. He was a
• 40:17
  cocaine addict. He did not go through a, he did not ever get into a 12 step program. He did not
• 40:25
  ever commit to being sober. Right. So one thing that people have said about him that I tend to agree
• 40:32
  with is that it just he, he had this. And I can, I'll bring it back to myself. There's this
• 40:41
  hole that you write this, people in recovery to call it a god-shaped hole. And I'm not sure,
• 40:46
  I mean, that sounds a little gross, honestly. But, but there's this, whatever it is, this emotional
• 40:52
  need, this yawning need for validation, for peace, for something, something to be, to feel
• 41:04
  satisfied. And there's this, for whatever reason, there's a nothing will really satisfy it, but it
• 41:09
  doesn't stop you from continuing to try with drugs, sex, alcohol, consumption, food, travel, work,
• 41:18
  whatever it is. I don't think it's very off base to say that that was the way that Tony lived.
• 41:25
  And I write about his, his addiction, quote unquote, to Jiu Jitsu for a while. He got very into the
• 41:32
  martial art of Jiu Jitsu. Everyone who's into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seems to display
• 41:38
  addiction like tendencies. There's no one that's just like, oh yeah, it's fine. I do it from time
• 41:42
  to time. They're like, bro, dude, you have to do BJJ. Yeah. Yes. Oh my God. That was a very good
• 41:50
  American BJJ accent. Yeah. It's just, and I, it's one of those things I don't think you do once a
• 41:57
  week, because it's so horrible. I don't know. And no, no shit to me, to me. You know, Tony would
• 42:05
  talk about how, yeah, you know, you got to like, you got your face in somebody's ass crack,
• 42:10
  and you get a staff infections because they're scratching you with their dirty fingernails.
• 42:14
  It's like, that's not, and it's expensive. It sounds great. Right now, I'm like, we evolved
• 42:19
  out of being cavemen for a reason. We live civilization for a reason. So we don't have to have
• 42:25
  my nose in somebody's dirty ass crack unless I really, really want to. Right. In a personal way.
• 42:31
  So he, you know, whatever Tony did, he did it a thousand percent. He either was in it,
• 42:38
  you know, to win it or he did not care at all. And he wasn't a guy who did anything in between. So
• 42:45
  ultimately, and I, this is my, this is the way that I tried to explain it to myself. The end of
• 42:50
  his life in the book is that he was in such a state of romantic obsession that when things went
• 42:57
  bad in his relationship, and it was so public and so humiliating for him, he could not take it,
• 43:04
  he could not survive it. And it is one of the great tragedies of my life and of the people that
• 43:13
  knew him and loved him, that he just couldn't get through that night. It was the pain and the
• 43:19
  humiliation was too much for him. We will never know for sure, right. He didn't leave a note and
• 43:26
  he didn't, anyway, really skipped ahead here, spoiler alert. He doesn't, he didn't survive.
• 43:32
  I would like to think, and it gives me some comfort to think that it was a spontaneous spasm of
• 43:40
  grief. I don't personally believe that it was something that he planned or that he was always on
• 43:46
  the cusp of, of doing, but it was a decision that he made in a, in a, in a dark, difficult time,
• 43:53
  and he followed through with it. And it all happened very quickly. So, and I think because he was,
• 44:01
  uh, an obsessive hopeless romantic who believed in old school love and who was willing to give up
• 44:08
  anything and everything to, to have this, this great love that he, he really treasured above all
• 44:13
  else was having a, a great love affair. You and he were texting the day before he died.
• 44:20
  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, he was in France and I was in New York, uh, and I reached out to him because
• 44:27
  I had gotten a message from the National Enquirer, which is one of the, the, the big, uh,
• 44:32
  US tabloids, and they had seen the European press had already reported that his girlfriend had,
• 44:40
  you know, they had published photos of his girlfriend sort of canutling with another man in Rome.
• 44:46
  And a story that, you know, there was, there was no story, but it was just interpretation of the
• 44:51
  photos. And so the National Enquirer reached out to me and said, you know, we, we intend to publish
• 44:56
  these photos and we're asking for, we're giving you the opportunity to comment, you know, by a certain
• 45:01
  time. Giving us Anthony the opportunity to comment. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And so I reached out to him
• 45:08
  and said, you know, what do you want to do about this? And he said, nothing, ignore them. Don't,
• 45:12
  don't respond at all. Uh, but do let me know when the story breaks because it's going to be bad.
• 45:18
  You know, it's going to, it's, they're not going to be kind and, you know, please do just keep me,
• 45:22
  keep me posted. Uh, and then we also, uh, just texted about very mundane things. He said, I,
• 45:29
  I need a dentist appointment. I want to get my hair cut. Um, you know, a handful of other very
• 45:35
  normal things planning, um, the next week when by everyone's measure, he would be back in New York
• 45:42
  and, and taking care of business. And I think the last thing I said was, you know, are you okay? Are
• 45:47
  you doing all right? You know, I know this is, it's not great. Uh, I didn't, I didn't want to get to
• 45:54
  into it with him. I didn't, you know, he didn't really want people to be fussing over him. Uh,
• 45:58
  but I did want to express concern. And he just said, um, I'll survive or I'll live and, and will
• 46:05
  survive, uh, which I took to mean will, meaning he and his girlfriend that their relationship would
• 46:09
  continue in some fashion. And I think he thought that that would be the case as well, at least at that
• 46:14
  time. Um, yeah. And it was, it was, um, you know, a matter of, I forget now, maybe 12 hours later,
• 46:24
  that, that I heard the news or maybe 18 hours later, that, that I was informed of what had happened.
• 46:29
  So, it's tough. How did you fail? What did you do? Uh, I felt numb and, um, sort of panicked
• 46:44
  and disbelieving, I think, uh, there was a moment, and I write about this in the book where it was
• 46:51
  like, well, you know, it's, it's, I felt, I found it impossible to really absorb the, the reality of
• 46:57
  it for at least a few minutes and probably an hour. So it was like, well, I kept going back to,
• 47:02
  well, how do we fix this? Right? Like the, there's, there's been situations before where we've had to
• 47:07
  sort of fix problems, big crises, right? Me and, uh, Tony's agent and, you know, maybe a few other
• 47:15
  people had had to sort of help him out of something. So it was like, how do we fix this? Uh, and it
• 47:21
  took some time to realize like, there is, there's no fixing. This is it. This is, this man is dead.
• 47:29
  Yeah, I just, I felt completely out of loss and, and, um, yeah, just straightforwardly,
• 47:37
  very sad, very, uh, very shocked and, uh, not, uh, not, uh, not prepared to deal with the
• 47:50
  questions and the comments and the curiosity and the news cycle and, you know, all of the
• 47:56
  reacts, the world reaction. I feel really grateful that I had a few hours between learning the news
• 48:02
  and the news going out to the rest of the world. Um, you know, these few hours where I knew what the
• 48:08
  truth was, but I could still kind of live in a world where, uh, as far as everyone else was concerned,
• 48:13
  this was, this was a living person. You said that you feel like he was an amazing romantic
• 48:21
  and that, that brought him down, that essentially killed him. How fatalistic are you about that
• 48:33
  final consequence? Like, if you rerun the universe a thousand times in how many of them,
• 48:40
  um, does he not get out of it alive? Well, none of us get out of it alive. Yeah. I don't know. Uh,
• 48:47
  you know, it's, it's something I thought about a lot in the, in the intervening weeks and months,
• 48:54
  um, if it hadn't been that specific person, might there have been someone else that he,
• 49:02
  uh, you know, that he went all in on who might have disappointed him. I don't know. It's,
• 49:11
  it may, there may have been, that may have been the case. There may have just been he had too much
• 49:16
  indeed, too much love to give that would have overwhelmed any relationship. That's possible. Or, uh,
• 49:25
  you know, he may have been with someone else who could have guided him to a safe shore. Um,
• 49:32
  or it's just a random, um, bad confluence of different things. She happens to be it, as I
• 49:39
  understand it, a specific hotel in Rome that meant something to two of them. So it's uniquely
• 49:45
  nasty and then maybe he's drunk and then I don't know, maybe he's still jet lagged and maybe he
• 49:51
  didn't get a proper night's sleep. I'm like, I guess you can go over it in a bazillion different
• 49:55
  ways and wonder how he could have, he could have been in New York and closer to, you know, his
• 50:03
  family members and in a safer feeling place than a, you know, random hotel in the French Alps.
• 50:14
  Unfortunately, the, you know, the, the storyline played out the way that it did and, uh, you know,
• 50:20
  it's something that I'll, I'll think about forever. I mean, I have dreams frequently have dreams
• 50:25
  about him, which is lovely. You know, I get to see him, talk to him, have a, have some sort of
• 50:30
  interaction with him and then it's sad to wake up and it's not real. How did you go through the
• 50:37
  months after his death? Uh, I ate a lot of candy. I smoked a lot of pot. I was still smoking pot at
• 50:46
  that time, even though I had quit drinking, which I'm very grateful that I was not still drinking.
• 50:52
  But I was still, you know, trying to get to some level of oblivion. Um, yeah. What did you feel about
• 51:00
  him? Like, is it possible to articulate the complex feelings that you have? Were you angry?
• 51:05
  Were you grateful? Were you both? Yeah, I think, I think it's, I think like many people who, uh,
• 51:13
  who lose someone that's important to them by suicide, there's, I think I was angry, um, just that
• 51:19
  this was the decision that he made. But at the same time, I, I knew that it had nothing to do with
• 51:25
  me, you know, that I wasn't, certainly wasn't, uh, on his mind, you know, uh, he had so many people
• 51:31
  in his life that were, that were close to him and, and that, even though he was very good at,
• 51:37
  keeping people at an arms length, um, you know, there were a lot of people that cared about him and
• 51:42
  that were in his orbit and I, it wasn't about any of us. Um, so, you know, anger felt like a natural
• 51:52
  reaction, but also a little bit of a self-centered and misplaced reaction because he, he didn't do
• 51:57
  it to hurt me. He wasn't thinking about me or anyone. I don't think. Um, yeah, and, you know,
• 52:06
  what an enormous loss. I had just, I had spent nine really fulfilling, wonderful years with a boss
• 52:15
  who respected me, who paid me well, who recognized that, um, the way to keep me around was to continue
• 52:24
  to give me interesting creative opportunities. Uh, you know, I just can't say enough about,
• 52:29
  about that job and about the, the professional relationship that we had, you know, I, um,
• 52:36
  and he was just a, you know, just a singular, wonderful person, uh, and, and very human and not perfect.
• 52:43
  And, and, uh, but for me and my situation, my relationship with him, it was, it was great. You
• 52:49
  know, I, and it wasn't creepy. It wasn't. There was no, he didn't have that same kind of way with
• 52:56
  women. Um, he was, uh, that was just not how he moved in the world. I never told you to slip your
• 53:02
  flotts out your thighs over. No, there was none of that. Um, that just wasn't the vibe he gave off
• 53:10
  at all. So, uh, yeah, it was, it was an extraordinarily, uh, difficult loss. We had started writing a
• 53:18
  book together. We were about three months into this, uh, project of the book called World Travel
• 53:22
  in a Reverend Guide. And, um, I had to, you know, I need to make a decision of whether or not to
• 53:29
  continue on with the book, the publisher very much wanted me to, um, and it took me a few months
• 53:34
  to get back to work on that because it just felt inconceivable. And then I just had to kind of get
• 53:39
  over the hump of the first few months of grief. And, and then I did, I did finish it. And that
• 53:45
  was a comfort in some ways, although it was sad and lonely in a very different kind of experience
• 53:50
  than I expected it would be. Hmm. I went back and listened to, uh, your podcast episode before
• 53:58
  he died. The last one on which he appears, because he was a frequent, uh, guest on your podcast
• 54:03
  or he would pop his head into the studio and you would have a chat for five minutes. Um, and there's
• 54:09
  no, uh, evidence whatsoever. I mean, he's talking about how he needs to quit smoking, you know,
• 54:13
  as, as you said, there's stuff about, you know, we've got to schedule this and do that. It was very
• 54:19
  forward thinking. And then I listened to your first episode after he died as well, where, of
• 54:23
  course, you're just shattered and you don't know what to say, completely understandably. Um,
• 54:28
  and I thought just that was just fascinating to one to get a glimpse into how out of the blue,
• 54:33
  it was even for him. Mm hmm. Yeah. That was the, the, the day that we recorded that podcast,
• 54:40
  although they need the, uh, with him. That was the last time I saw him in person. It was just
• 54:45
  before he left for Florence, uh, to shoot an episode there, which never, never got made. Um,
• 54:51
  and he was really happy and really excited. And, uh, you know, they, they, they shot in the, uh,
• 54:57
  footsie gallery and that, you know, it was this, he, he couldn't have been happier, you know,
• 55:02
  and he, he was, um, that was it. That was the last time I ever saw him.
• 55:07
  The first time that you saw him, you, you, you gloss over it quite quickly in the, in the book,
• 55:12
  because you've been working for him for six months already before you actually met him in person.
• 55:16
  Uh, right. Uh, what stage of his career is this out? How big a star is he at this point?
• 55:21
  And when you come on board with him, what's the process of getting to know him like?
• 55:26
  Yeah. Well, so I had, I had, just to be clear, I had worked with him on his cookbook in 2002.
• 55:30
  And we met in person a few times. Um, and then there were some years went by. We did a, um,
• 55:37
  a one-off event. And then in 2009, he hired me to be his assistant, but uh, six months to a year
• 55:43
  went by before we saw each other in person. So at that point, he had had several years on
• 55:49
  television with his show, which at the time was called No Reservations. Uh, he had published,
• 55:54
  probably six or eight books by then. Um, he was, you know, quite successful, quite well established,
• 56:00
  um, and just a few years out from transitioning over to CNN. And the title of the show changed
• 56:07
  to parts unknown. And it became, he became, I think, a much bigger international star because of
• 56:12
  the reach of CNN versus the travel channel, which was his original network. Um, so when I started
• 56:18
  working for him in 2009, he was very, very busy, uh, doing, uh, you know, 30 city lecture tour,
• 56:25
  plus, uh, plus the television, plus books, plus having a, you know, young daughter and being married.
• 56:33
  And so when we finally saw each other in 2010 at a poetry reading, he didn't recognize me.
• 56:37
  We hadn't seen each other in person in a long time. And I could tell by his face and his body
• 56:41
  language that I thought I was just a rando, you know, coming up for an autograph. And then I just
• 56:46
  stuck my hand out and said, hi, I'm your assistant, Laurie Williver. And he was sort of
• 56:51
  laughed and was sort of embarrassed and sheepish. And, uh, you know, of course, of course, yes, oh,
• 56:55
  sorry, you know, um, it was funny. I mean, I would kind of tease him about it afterward. But, um,
• 57:01
  it didn't surprise me. You know, this is a man who met thousands and thousands of people
• 57:05
  over the course of his life. So, um, and once you started having a slower period with him or
• 57:11
  maybe not slower, but more intimate periods, I guess, when you were traveling together and so on,
• 57:15
  what were the first few moments when you kind of got a glimpse into something more than just the
• 57:21
  public persona? There was a time in, uh, Vietnam in Hue Vietnam, where I was riding with him in the,
• 57:31
  you know, with a truck driver would take him to and from the set separate from the
• 57:38
  cinematographers and the directors and producers. And so there was a day where we had, you know,
• 57:43
  one hour drive out to a site. And, um, I brought my book because I thought, well, I don't,
• 57:49
  I don't want to assume that, you know, I don't want to make him talk to me for an hour. I can,
• 57:52
  I can see how he probably gets tired and doesn't want to have to be social. And so I'll just
• 57:57
  bring my book and I'll leave him alone. Um, and, and this, and this was the first time that I
• 58:02
  traveled with him and the crew. And I just, I didn't want to be an imposition. I was so happy to be
• 58:07
  there. Uh, I never opened the book. We chatted the whole time just about this and that. Uh, you know,
• 58:12
  he had just bought his daughter a watch that was also a telephone, but it was a pre, it wasn't
• 58:16
  an Apple watch. It was something that predated that. So he was excited to talk about that. And I
• 58:21
  think he might have called her while we were in the car. Um, you know, just chatting about work stuff.
• 58:27
  And then he talked to me, he told me the story of being in, um, somewhere in the Middle East that
• 58:33
  was extraordinarily dangerous. And there were some very close calls and moments where they were
• 58:37
  being followed. And he thought, you know, there was a moment where somebody was going to get shot.
• 58:42
  And, uh, you know, he was really enjoying telling these stories and sharing this experience. And
• 58:48
  it wasn't for the camera and it wasn't for an interview. It was just a friend telling a friend's
• 58:54
  stories. Um, and he even got kind of teary eyed talking about, um, being in India and, and the
• 59:01
  contrast between the, you know, the extreme poverty and some of the, you know, the difficult stuff
• 59:06
  that he saw in certain parts of the country and the extraordinary beauty of, of just everyday life
• 59:13
  of the way that things are made beautiful just for the sake of beauty. And, uh, I don't think I
• 59:18
  had ever seen him get sort of emotional in that way before. And it was really, again, it wasn't,
• 59:24
  it wasn't a show. It was just him sharing an experience with another person.
• 59:29
  Were you ever worried about his sobriety on set or when he had to work or show up for things?
• 59:34
  No, that wasn't, you know, being, uh, being on set and, and being on these shoots, I didn't
• 59:39
  really have a role. Um, and my role was, I was just there to kind of along for the ride,
• 59:45
  uh, to protect him in some sense. Sure. But, you know, everyone, everyone that was there, um,
• 59:52
  you know, things would have gone on perfectly well and probably in, maybe in some cases,
• 59:56
  better without me. I mean, I wasn't, I didn't, I wasn't pressed into service in any way.
• 1:00:01
  So I think that he was happy to have me there. And then he sometimes would put me between
• 1:00:07
  himself and the crew to give, you know, to be able to take a step back. And so then I would be
• 1:00:12
  relaying messages or sometimes, um, you know, to being that, that stopgap for him. But, um,
• 1:00:20
  it was, I worried about his sobriety. No, I mean, I don't think I ever saw him.
• 1:00:24
  I know that there probably were shoots where they were drinking a lot. And that was,
• 1:00:28
  and, you know, part of the, maybe part of the story, uh, there was a, a shot, a shoot in
• 1:00:34
  Borneo where I think there was a lot of heavy drinking because it was part of a festival.
• 1:00:39
  Um, none, I wasn't on those kinds of shoots. So I didn't, I didn't worry about his sobriety.
• 1:00:46
  And in terms of the appetites and these characters, but not just Tony, but Mario and, I guess,
• 1:00:53
  the kind of person who maybe you had aspirations to be when you were a young person starting out
• 1:00:58
  in New York City. How, how much can you disentangle the excess from the talent, I guess? I mean,
• 1:01:07
  I asked, I also had an experience where I was the target of, um, should we say sexual overtures
• 1:01:14
  from a powerful and famous employer. Um, and I've kind of concluded that this person would not
• 1:01:23
  have been able to be the person that he was without a sense of heedless, expansionist,
• 1:01:33
  joyful, unconstrained, unfettered, like himness in a way, which doesn't in any way, excuse it, excuse it.
• 1:01:42
  But it, it means it's impossible to sort of disentangle the good from the bad in it. How do you
• 1:01:47
  think when you reflect about Mario and about Tony, whether they could have been better people?
• 1:01:58
  Well, all right, starting with Mario. I mean, he is still alive. Uh, he is not in the public eye
• 1:02:04
  anymore. He doesn't have, uh, ownership of any restaurants. Um, it's, I don't think it's too,
• 1:02:13
  too late for him in some ways. Uh, you know, I, I don't know. In other words, could he have been
• 1:02:20
  the Mario battalion that was, could he have, could you have, could you use a scalpel to cut off
• 1:02:26
  all the bits, all the bits of doing those inappropriate things and still retain the Mario
• 1:02:30
  battaliness of Mario battalion at that time? I would like to think so because, you know, there
• 1:02:36
  are plenty of people that were around him in a professional capacity that were giving him
• 1:02:42
  opportunities or bringing him along and, and collaborating with him. And he didn't show that
• 1:02:49
  side of himself to them. Uh, you know, there's been enough people that have come to me in the interim
• 1:02:55
  and said, gosh, I never saw that. I never saw that side of him. Um, and, you know, part of me is
• 1:03:01
  like, well, right, of course, you know, you are, you have a lot of power yourself. You, you know,
• 1:03:06
  you were in a decision making position to give him an opportunity or not. So he knew better. Um,
• 1:03:12
  and, you know, he made great television and he made great restaurants and he, he was this very
• 1:03:20
  compelling figure to a lot of people. It cooked books, you know, television videos, etc, etc. So
• 1:03:27
  I think, you know, he is a very smart, charismatic, uh, curious person who retains enormous
• 1:03:36
  amount of information and knows how to make a great restaurant. And I, I don't think that his
• 1:03:44
  darker impulses and his, uh, unchecked, um, you know, horniness
• 1:03:49
  makes, uh, make, made him the success that he was. I think it was all of the other things that he brought to the table.
• 1:03:59
  Uh, it was the, it was the, you know, the lack of boundaries and the heavy drinking that took him down. So,
• 1:04:07
  yeah, I think you could. If you, if you scowled away the bad stuff, I think he, he personally could have
• 1:04:14
  still done the things that he, that he did so successfully. And, yeah, and what about with Tony?
• 1:04:22
  And with Tony, uh, I would, I don't know. I would like to think it's the same. You know, he was not
• 1:04:31
  the, the restaurateur and chef that Mario was. He was very, very upfront about being a, uh,
• 1:04:38
  journeyman chef and cook. Uh, decent, could run a service, could, could command a crew, but was not
• 1:04:46
  setting the world on fire with his cooking. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's different. It's more
• 1:04:54
  difficult with him because so much of his writing and the writing that was most compelling was about
• 1:05:00
  his chasing of excesses and his, uh, you know, his, his very romantic heroine addiction, but, um,
• 1:05:10
  I don't know. Yeah, it's, uh, maybe it's, it's different with him because his pursuit of
• 1:05:17
  uh, art and beauty and, you know, making beautiful television and writing compelling things.
• 1:05:24
  I don't know. I do, I do kind of reject off, uh, uh, out of hand this, this thing of you can only
• 1:05:29
  be creative. You can only really, you know, make amazing art if you are, uh, fucked up. I just don't,
• 1:05:37
  I don't believe that. I can speak for myself, uh, this book, which I think is good. And I am very
• 1:05:45
  proud of it. And it's gotten a lot of, uh, great critical response. I couldn't have written this
• 1:05:51
  book as the, as the drunk and the pot head that I was. I just didn't have it in me to be honest, uh,
• 1:05:57
  and to be disciplined enough to write the book. So that's my answer to that. Yeah. Yeah. You're
• 1:06:04
  reminding me that, uh, like David Sederis, Sederis says that, you know, before he quit drinking,
• 1:06:09
  he was like, I can't give up drinking. I'll be, I won't be creative. If I'm, if I'm not drinking
• 1:06:14
  and then he quit drinking and he's like, oh, I mean, I can still, I can actually just think
• 1:06:17
  more clearly. And I don't have to edit my work quite so much because in the first draft,
• 1:06:22
  same with Stephen King and other people who thought that they could only be creative when they were
• 1:06:26
  high. Um, that's not the, to say that it is not a necessary condition for everyone is not the same
• 1:06:37
  as saying that it isn't intrinsic to the, the story that some people are weaving and that makes
• 1:06:45
  them so compelling. So I just wonder if part of, like part of what so many people loved about
• 1:06:54
  Anthony Bourdain was the fact that he was an obviously hopeless romantic and obviously kind of
• 1:07:01
  fucked up Renaissance man who just didn't, it wasn't quite of this world or made for this world
• 1:07:07
  and wasn't, didn't have the proper sense of propriety or proportion, but was. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:07:13
  you remove the fuck up and, and is he still Anthony Bourdain? I don't know.
• 1:07:19
  Yeah. I mean, it was all of these different decisions that he made and circumstances in his
• 1:07:24
  life that led him to decide to write kitchen confidential while he was, you know, while he was
• 1:07:30
  running a decent Eastrow kitchen in Manhattan, right? So if he had, if he had been a more serious
• 1:07:38
  chef or if he had been a more serious writer, if he had had a better academic career,
• 1:07:44
  that might not have been the case. Yeah, I will say some of the, you know, the bottomless
• 1:07:52
  appetites that people loved about him, I think some of that was smoke and mirrors. Maybe in the,
• 1:07:59
  maybe in the early days of television, he really was eating everything and he was, you know,
• 1:08:04
  eating the feeding card of the cobra and the shots of the weird stuff.
• 1:08:09
  I think his time went on. He, you know, as, again, you know, the time takes a toll on your body
• 1:08:15
  and you can only do so much and he wasn't, he wasn't eating everything that you saw.
• 1:08:22
  Obviously, he took bites of things, you know, but he wasn't eating an enormous meal three times
• 1:08:28
  a day. You know, I think he, they arranged the productions so that he wasn't, you know,
• 1:08:36
  just constantly having to, to be a glutton and to be drinking, you know, you know, hundreds of
• 1:08:44
  cocktails. It's, some of it is, is clever production that still, that still gives the viewer the feeling
• 1:08:52
  that, oh, this guy, look at him, he's eating the barbecue and the hot dog and the, you know,
• 1:08:57
  whatever. And then the 10-course meal at the fancy restaurant, but it might not all be happening
• 1:09:01
  in the same day. Let's just ask some rapid fire questions, which you don't have to go into
• 1:09:06
  too much detail on, in, and what's the, what's your favorite cuisine? Italian.
• 1:09:13
  Yeah. Any particular dish? Oh, God, pasta, linguine with clam sauce,
• 1:09:19
  pasta. Most unusual place that you've been?
• 1:09:25
  Probably Sri Lanka, and especially the northern part of the country,
• 1:09:29
  Jaffa. Isn't that where the Civil War was most intense?
• 1:09:32
  Yeah, yeah. And it's, you really, you really see it still. Well, you did, I mean, I was there
• 1:09:38
  in 2017, so I can't speak to what it's like now, but it was really still just kind of coming out
• 1:09:44
  at the end of the Civil War. If you could never have drunk, would you?
• 1:09:53
  Probably not. I think, I think, as much as damage as I did in some ways,
• 1:09:59
  yeah, no, I think I wouldn't have the stories to tell that I have.
• 1:10:04
  What's going to happen to you when you die?
• 1:10:06
  Nothing. I don't know. I think I will be cremated, I think. That seems like the most,
• 1:10:17
  the politest way to go. And you won't have any consciousness?
• 1:10:21
  No, I don't think so. I don't, I don't really believe in that.
• 1:10:26
  Who do you love the most? My son. What would you tell yourself, your younger self?
• 1:10:33
  Say you're talking to yourself at the edge of 10.
• 1:10:38
  God, what would I tell myself? You know, care less about what people think about you.
• 1:10:43
  Don't let that stop you from doing things and don't let that get you depressed and anxious.
• 1:10:50
  When our children are our age, will things on balance be better or worse?
• 1:10:57
  Oh, I hope better. I have to believe that things will be better, that things feel tough right now,
• 1:11:03
  but I think there's enough good, enough good people to keep things moving in a positive direction.
• 1:11:12
  It's a fascinating book. Laurie, thanks for your time. Great to talk to you.
• 1:11:16
  Thank you.