In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain

by Tom Vitale

Thirty years later and I still didn’t believe anyone would choose to go back to Kansas after having experienced Oz in Technicolor. That’s what travel was like for me.

Tony always seemed in a hurry, like he might disappear at any second.

“What do we include, what do we choose to leave out? Either way it’s our choice. It’s about the moral quandary of travel and white privilege. The camera is a liar. Drawing attention to it calls into question our own reliability and shows our hands aren’t clean.

The whole evening was bathed in the fluorescent glow of unreality,

humanity is still in its awkward adolescent phase,

Tony was a man who was trying his best—to free himself of his analytical mind, to find a belief system that was more forgiving of his spiritual ambivalence, to express his love to the people he cared about, to reconcile the contradictions that embodied his internal and external life and ultimately defined his persona. His best was enough for millions of fans, but it wasn’t enough for him.