Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

The documentary tracks Anthony Bourdain's move from the kitchen into television, and then how that life consumed him. Friends, producers, camera operators and an ex-wife speak. It ends with his death in 2018 and offers nobody an easy explanation. It is not interested in the travel show. It is interested in the tempo behind the camera: Bourdain spent two hundred days a year on the road, and what the film builds is how that rhythm isolates a person. The crew's anger at him is not hidden either. The form leans on archive: offcuts, footage left out of the shows, audio recordings and interviews. Morgan Neville directed. The most disputed part of the film is three sentences: to voice text Bourdain wrote but never read aloud, Neville used a voice cloned with artificial intelligence and did not note it onscreen. When the story broke the reaction grew; Neville said he had permission from the ex-wife, and she stated that no such thing happened. Who it is for: people who knew Bourdain's work and like documentaries about a life in media. Who it is not for: anyone sensitive about suicide, and anyone who objects to AI-generated voice in a documentary. Both sit at the centre of this film.