Filmmaker Morgan Neville’s new documentary on Anthony Bourdain, “Roadrunner,” premiered over the weekend at the Tribeca Festival, days after the three-year anniversary of Bourdain’s death. Just the debut of the film’s trailer has already prompted an outpouring of emotion — and millions of views within days, a rarity for a documentary — showing how many are still grieving Bourdain’s loss.
“I’ve come to think of the film as an act of therapy for the public,” Neville said in an interview with the Associated Press. “I think for people who only know Tony as someone they were a fan of, like me, there was just this giant question mark hanging over his life because of his death. How the (expletive) could Tony Bourdain kill himself? That is still something people are grappling with.”
“Roadrunner,” which Focus Features will release in theaters July 16, goes about answering that question by filling in a fuller portrait of Bourdain. It will provide new insight and context to Bourdain’s end by following the arc of his life as a chef, and later as a world famous travel host. After years of working as a chef in New York, Bourdain’s book “Kitchen Confidential” catapulted him to fame in middle age, before eventually catapulting him further into same with shows, such as “Parts Unknown,” eventually making Bourdain an unlikely, and unusually authentic, television icon.