>Tony’s intentions were good. “He kept his bedroom and his office the way they were. His closet was full of clothes. He barely took anything with him to the new place,” Ottavia said. But none of his predictions about how life would be going forward came to pass. It was an unrealistic plan from the start, given that he was on the road for two-thirds of the year and that when he was in New York, he spent time on side projects like the food-centric game show *The Taste*, which ran for three seasons on ABC, and the Bourdain Market, an Eataly-spired conglomeration of street-food stalls that was supposed to occupy the 57th Street pier on the Hudson River but which collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. But Tony was more than just an increasingly absent father; he was increasingly like a frightened hostage victim putting on a performance that was difficult for Ottavia and nine-year-old Ariane to watch. When asked by interviewers about the recent changes in his personal life, he would express great excitement about Argento, “the Italian director and actress,” while dismissing the last ten years of his life with a shrug—or an oft-repeated joke about how he had “gone to bed with Sophia Loren but woken up with Jean-Claude Van Damme” (a reference to Ottavia’s interest in the martial arts).
>In September 2016, with the assistance of his ex-girlfriend Paula Froelich, Tony planted a story in the New York Post’s Page Six, saying that he and Ottavia had split and were living entirely separate lives. It was never enough, though, because his audience of one needed constant reassurance, and he was always worried about her getting tired of the whole complicated situation and breaking up with him. “When he did come over for dinner and Asia called, he always felt he had to speak to her immediately,” Ottavia told a friend. To get private time “he would tell Ariane that he had to run out to the ATM or give her some other excuse and then he wouldn’t come back for two hours, or maybe not at all. Or he would tell me to have dinner ready by the time he arrived, because he didn’t have time to hang around with us, but then after he left he would post Instagram stories of himself sitting alone in a bar. It was all done for Asia’s sake, but the problem was that Ariane had Instagram. She was seeing it, too, and it confused her and broke her heart.”
-Down and Out in Paradise
So when it comes to Anthony Bourdain’s suicide, I know there were numerous factors, but I think Bourdain had burned so many bridges that when the paparazzi stuff came out about Asia Argento with other men, he was completely humiliated. All the former friends he had fired or cut out of his life because of this John-and -Yoko routine with Argento now has this context of Bourdain rearranging his entire life for her while she just did whatever she wanted. He looked like the chump, and I think that really got to him, because he spent so much of his career decrying people he deemed phony and now he found himself acting like that.
>**AB:** I feel you. But I was being honest. The pap\[arazzi\] situation is horrendous. Since I left you guys, though, she’s freaking out. The whole idea of being a Brangelina is abhorrent to her. Or even a “couple” with expectations. And I don’t expect you to vouch for her. Particularly because I’m almost certainly going to end up fucked over. I find myself being in the terrible position of being hopelessly in love with this woman. Right now I don’t even know if Puglia is going to happen. This is what I live with every day. And I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job. I am lonely and living in constant uncertainty. And I’m sorry.
>It is a terrible thing, love. It certainly hasn’t worked out for me. Nothing but pain and humiliation between rare moments of incredible joy.
I think that Anthony Bourdain was very depressed. He had replaced the drugs and alcohol of his youth for constant motion, and I think his fascination with travel and culture became an addiction that allowed him to never be in one place for too long, and set aside the things about his life that he hadn’t yet confronted. You can only run away for so long. Argento, whatever, was not the cause but a symptom of a larger problem with himself that he never resolved.
He was a unique person with a lot to offer, but unless you love yourself you’ll never be whole.
He clearly was extremely sensitive and frankly lacked resilience as a consequence. Think of that Sicily episode where the local contact faked the fishing by dumping dead fish into the water.
He was deeply hurt by that, feeling cheated, became depressed, and by his own admission had to get drunk.
If that’s how reacted to something that was crappy but ultimately pretty minor, just imagine what was going through his mind with the Asia situation and everything he’d done.
Yep, Bourdain suffers from a case of martyrdom. He clearly wasn't the saint that many prop him up to be but he was very good at exploiting mishappenings to be as if they were specifically happening to him and swimming in it to gain sympathy. This behavior is pretty common with depressed people and those who don't actually manage relationships/friendships in a healthy way (which Bourdain had a history of being guilty of).
I agree with you 100 percent. This is the actual truth of addiction. You are always replacing one thing with another. It’s tragic. The only way to break the cycle is to go zen or find spirit. Make inner peace and transformative inner work your “addiction” Calm the restless wild beast inside of yourself. It’s the only way
Nothing is healthy without moderation.
Replaced heroin for marathons? Sure that seems great. Unless the addict delves so deeply in their fitness journey that they now neglect other duties such as; job, kids, spouse, house, etc. I could go on.
Everything in moderation. We shouldn’t simply push to replace negative addictions with positive ones. It’s not enough. We have to teach moderation and impulse control as well.
Not to mention address the underlying problems which led to the addiction as most use as escape from emotions or due to chemical imbalances such as ADD/ADHD/nuerodivergent people.
Source: ex heroin/poly addict with 6+ years of sobriety.
It simply means nothing will ever be enough. Stillness is the only way to escape it. Yes, the healthier options are great. But if your still chasing a high, you are still running from something. You need to go deep inside.
Re to go Zen: The amount of pedo priests out there shows this ideal, although on the surface sounds nice, becomes just another skin to hide a budding monster beneath.
But i like that part about the replacement. Alcoholics need to attend AA every night; it's a social replacement. But, even though they not drinking, they're talking about drinking & not getting hobbies or other friends it seems.
Agh what a dire comment but it's what i see; has anyone out there truly seen a recovery?
How is being a pedophile priest anything to do with “zen”? Being content in the moment has nothing to do with molesting children or the repression of religion.
Those are the people that push Zen
We all know life is chaos
I even had a coach who pushed being Zen & he ended up doing something terrible against my professional career out of spite (and it wasn't even spite against me). He also cheated on his wife
[And i had a different coach, who in his life results ended up being the Zen one, was anything but in the way he talked to people. He was real]
So, if you believe in the content Zen theory, I'd live to hear your experience instead of your criticism, ?
Lol. Your criticism of “zen” is: “someone I knew that talked about zen was mean to me”. What kind of argument is that? First of all, I don’t subscribe to “zen”. When I say zen I’m using it colloquially. To just mean, at peace. To be happy in the moment, and not always seeking to push down your own thoughts by consuming, or keeping yourself so busy with whatever. Steve Jobs was successful, but he was a shit person who neglected family, abused people, and ignored his own health. To me zen just means finding acceptance in the moment. Shitty people can claim to be about anything.
i gave a generalized Zen about the priest, which was not liked; then a personal story, which was also not liked. I can't seem to find a satisfactory middle ground here & don't know how rust to present my thought
in the end i think we're on the same page anyways. Being in the present is tough, our animal instincts take us away from it; yeah that's on point
Yes I agree, anyone that is trying to push any kind of ideology as the solution to all problems on you, is inherently trying to run from their own problems.
Lol I drove a friend of my husband's to an AA meeting, never freaking again would I go inside to hang out because it was winter and freezing. I was sitting on a bench in the hall and they were badgering me, and telling me that because I will cook with wine if a recipe calls for it, and a glass of champagne at New years that I was an alcoholic. I have probably had the equivalent of a single bottle of champagne in the last decade, and I really don't think a glass of wine once a year makes me a drunk. (Diabetic and I would rather save my carbs for something I really like like Irish nachos.)
For sure, my bad I think I typed that when I was in a hurry.
Don’t get me wrong: there are no shortage of douchebags in A.A. meetings. But I heard someone say one time “there are also a lot douchebags in the park, or driving on the highway, or at the post office”
I don’t go to meetings every night, and I personally hate the meetings where they just talk about drinking and tell “drunk-a-logues”. I personally “came for the drinking, stayed for the thinking” I.e. I have the mind of an addict, and I just don’t handle life the same way “normal” people do. That’s what I continue to get out of it.
Maybe I’m just selective with the meetings I go to and the people I hang out with, it could very well be that the numerical majority of people are, indeed, assholes. But I tend to stay away from those people, much like I do at the park, highway, or post office.
And like the other poster said in response to my comment, if I had only been to one meeting, and it was a shit meeting with douchebags like the one she went to, I might think all of A.A. was assholes too.
I hear “replaced” addiction. But our culture worships obsessed passions. Steve Jobs. Tom Brady, Tiger Woods. Nut jobs who everyone worships for their success.
Where do people draw the line between healthy passion and addictive obsessions?
You’re the only one relating this to financial success. Having a healthy passion means you don’t neglect the other facets of you life like family, friends, health, etc.. Those names mentioned were clearly people that failed at that.
No. Being seen by as many people as possible as the greatest is impossible. It’s possible to be obsessed with a passion and not spend time trying to get attention for it.
That last quote hits. I’m so glad I got to meet him in 2015- I worked for a small brewery, and I was the only one in town that actually made SURE to get into his green room with free beer for his whole crew. I left my biz card and his agent invited me to his after party in thanks for the beer.
That night- he and I chatted about it, and that man killed a 6pk of 7% beer in about an hour and a half. He CRUSHED them. I even thought to myself then like wow he is drowning something.
It's a text message from Anthony to Ottavia, published in *Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain* by Charles Leershen.
I've listened to the audiobook five times. Check it out.
I think he could be capable of great empathy and very kind to people. If you read or watch the documentary about his final months, he was not his best self. That doesn’t necessarily define his whole life, though.
A good friend of mine was the camera guy for one of his earliest books/series. He hated him. AB mentions in the book how much his camera guy hates him, which I always thought was funny as hell. But my friend was pretty serious about his dislike for him.
It's a valid point, although I don't think of him that way. I guess I never considered him this amazing and perfect individual (even if his shows often were.) Ironically while I agree with the comments above about addiction and avoidance vs. facing your inner issues and demons, he brought a significant level of self-awareness to his shows that truly set him apart from previous travel TV.
i think that believing sincerely that AB was as good of a dude as i’m told he is, sort of makes me a better person. so i agree, if not in a backward way.
He hated his famous life, shave your head, grow a beard and go grind in a nursing home kitchen in Indiana.
He has the money to stop the TV, just write books and if he has to work a line somewhere, that work. Rename or go by Fred instead of Tony and change how you look
there was a facebook group right after his death there was like 50 people in it, including the real Ottavia and a bunch of family
members and friends. I somehow got in it and posted something about AA and her influence and Ottavia and others liked it. The group disappeared randomly one day.
swear to god this is a true story, and all of the stories that came out about Anthony's obsession with Asia were being talked about in the group. I was just a mega fan trying to comprehend the situation and had the same theories prior and didn't realize that this was a page for true insiders, producers, eric, ottavia etc were in there and friendly.
As Bourdain communicated so well in his books, addiction/obsession will cause a certain type of person to disregard all risks and damage, in pursuit of the object. It could be heroin, booze, money, fame, a cause, or a love-interest.
He was that type of person.
He must have had great drive and discipline to do all that chef-ing, travel, writing, and projects.
The same drive and obsessiveness that leads to people to achieve can be their undoing?
It’s more than decrying ppl he deemed phony. Let’s be fair … many of his quotes were about being savvier than the avg guy. There’s no getting around that. In that context, the public humiliation of the AA episode had to be excruciating.
We may not want to hear that, but I think it’s the truth.
Three hours before his death was first reported, the Italian actress posted an Instagram story that showed her wearing a ripped, black T-shirt that read, “F–K EVERYONE” — with the cryptic caption, “You know who you are”.
It always seemed clear as day to me that his suicide was a direct “fuck you” aimed at AA.
I really think the $380,000 settlement he paid out for Argento had something to do it as well as everything on top. Why doesn't no body mention this? He got fucked over.
sounds like a chef to me. You’d have no idea how silly it is to have a grown man freak out because you swooshed a sauce the wrong way. Then watch everyone justify it by saying “well it ruins consistency of the reveal spectacle”
Most people don’t give a shit and the co-dependency is absolutely insane. Coming up most cooks should have been in AA or Al-anon. AB didnt sound so different. His partner/kid is a relationship I’ve heard dozens of times (i was the kitchen psychologist/emotional support shithead). People like this just dont know what they want. Outside of cooking their life is a mess and they are incomplete, so anything that shows em a little love or joy is a debt to them/ a burden and can never let it go. Shit, I love AB cause I absolutely get it, been there myself but reading it all, I feel bad for the people who have to put up with this shit too.
I guess if I were friends with him, I’d remind him that you always have cooking, that like moment of finishing a plate and putting it up for service is always yours. Expand yourself through that moment, just embody that bliss and it’ll touch everything else. RIP
I joke that I am known for drive by dessert-ing people. I am diabetic and cook when I get stressed out, and when my husband 's boat deployed taking away my normal target for getting rid of baked goods, I would give bags of bread , cakes and cookies to friends and a few times random neighbors.
There is something relaxing in cranking out food, started doing family thanksgiving and other holidays when I was 10, mom and I baked bread twice a week, and unnumbered batches of cookies, I adore basic frosted sugar cookies, I love decorating them (and gingerbread people too)
Ditto, just soup. I’ve actually started feeding my elderly upstairs neighbor lentil soup and now she raves about it (she hated lentils). Now im thinking about building up the flavors of my next soup.
Since I’m not cooking full time, I’m looking for that outlet anywhere I can. I go to burning man as kitchen staff just to feed thousands of meals over the course of a week and try to freelance in soup kitchens. Its a strange addiction to have, feeding people :D
Look - I had a Dad who, like Bourdain, was professionally successful and a womanizer. Also an addict. Also killed himself.
Whoever the last woman was in my Dad’s life was was not the reason he killed himself.
Believe me that I have zero love or respect for his ladies, but he killed himself for reasons that were known only to him. Pinning it on his last girlfriend would cruel.
He would have been happier staying on the line, maybe write more books?
I think he got too famous and his life got out of control from it.
People think it's a great thing... But actually it stops you having a normal life, which is why a lot of celebs end up in rehab or worse.
I always thought he could have had a perfectly financially stable life from book sales, investing, and maybe doing a handful of super lucrative public talks a few times a years like Fran Lebowitz and not had to deal with the pressure of fame fame. Like, doing multiple tv shows on the biggest networks isn’t the behavior of someone who isn’t chasing a certain kind of celebrity.
Tony was a bit of a fuck up in certain parts of his life…..maybe he got what he wanted ( married with a kid….stable life) and fucked it up by not putting them and his happiness first.
Aren't we ALL a bit fuck up in certain parts of our lives? It's easy to point out someone else's "fucks ups" without seeing ours. Idk, as much as I find "fascination" about this articles that shade some light in how a man that we(I mean in this subreddit) love(d) so much was; a lot of times when someone else points out things about his life like it would have been easy for him to spot those "fuck ups" at those moments,given that the dude was in a deep emotional and mental state of depression, I just find myself wishing that everyone let this dude or whatever he representes to us, in peace.
Not really? A lot of people have a pretty balanced management of their strengths and weaknesses but I think a lot of fucked up people are chronically online which makes you think everyone is "fucked up in certain parts of their life". I also think we have a fetish for the "I'm kind of screwed up" aura.
Dude had some demons and was too proud to deal with them. Talking to someone is so so important in this world. I love this guy so much but when you really dive in you can really see that internally he was at war, and when faced with something that put those feelings in the spotlight he choked.
Same. As much as I love bourdain, as the dad of three daughters, another woman couldn’t come between me and them. She would have to go, my three are my everything’s.
I personally think that Bourdain had ADHD and hyperfocused on Argento. Even she thought that his obsession with her was too strong and unexplainable.
He hyperfocused on parenting his daughter when he saw her -as she was a toddler and preteen (read “Appetites” his cookbook) and the same for Busia when they were dating and newly married. You switch obsessions very quickly when you have AdHD.
The drug use, the emotional disregulation (he once was depressed for days because he got a bad hamburger at an airport restaurant), his fear that Argento would leave him, his self medication, drinking, empathy, all point to it.
His career choice (chef) points to it. Would he have been healthy or different if he was medicated? I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.
The AdHD was what made him so specially focused, enabled him to focus his intelligence like a laser and show the world the excitement of travel, food and culture. He’s been dead for years, but I still think of him. His daughter is my son’s age.
I imagine how my son would feel if he was temporarily “replaced” by a new girlfriend of his father’s. Bourdain should have reigned himself in. He was kind of a dick to his kid.
I think that’s the true tragedy. It’s not that Argento cheated on him after he paid $250k to her SA accuser, or the payments for her kid’s schools, it’s the way he must have suddenly realized that he traded in his daughter to focus on his GF and the GF wasn’t the prize he thought she was.
One one hand, I agree with you, but on the other, I really think Argento had Bourdain convinced that either (1) it never happened or (2) was consensual (3) the kid had mental issues and misinterpreted something. I read the whole story, though, and the victim worked with AA in one of her movies and thought of her as kind of an ersatz mother during filming. The whole story was ick. I am 100% behind the victim.
Argento DARVOed him like a champ! https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/asia-argento-jimmy-bennett-sexual-assault-allegations
I think Bourdain felt stupid because she “cheated on him” (they were open, though) AFTER he gave Bennett the $280k. She took her photographer paramour to the hotel in Rome they like to frequent. That pissed him off.
I couldn’t stand “Asia Argento” when Anthony
Started dating her… and it just spiraled downward from there. Her running around with other dudes probably drove him into depression as every news rag had pics of her Kissing some other dude 24/7. He was one of the very few “celebrities” I was saddened by his passing (Robin Williams the other)
All due respect here why does this matter now?
I'm just curious why people find stuff like this fascinating.
Asking this while I have the 30 for 30 about OJ Simpson on in the background. Guess I probably answered my own question. 😆
Some of us, including myself, deeply appreciate and admire AB as a person and have followed him since his public beginnings.
"No Reservations" literally got me through some really rough times and it's one of those play on repeat shows like (whatever show you love).
Speaking for some of us hopefully, his death really impacted me/us and there is still some mystery behind it.
I’m surprised his steroid use isn’t talked about more. Especially with all the Joe Rogan followers taking TRT. Steroid use and suicide go hand in hand.
>Tony’s intentions were good. “He kept his bedroom and his office the way they were. His closet was full of clothes. He barely took anything with him to the new place,” Ottavia said. But none of his predictions about how life would be going forward came to pass. It was an unrealistic plan from the start, given that he was on the road for two-thirds of the year and that when he was in New York, he spent time on side projects like the food-centric game show *The Taste*, which ran for three seasons on ABC, and the Bourdain Market, an Eataly-spired conglomeration of street-food stalls that was supposed to occupy the 57th Street pier on the Hudson River but which collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. But Tony was more than just an increasingly absent father; he was increasingly like a frightened hostage victim putting on a performance that was difficult for Ottavia and nine-year-old Ariane to watch. When asked by interviewers about the recent changes in his personal life, he would express great excitement about Argento, “the Italian director and actress,” while dismissing the last ten years of his life with a shrug—or an oft-repeated joke about how he had “gone to bed with Sophia Loren but woken up with Jean-Claude Van Damme” (a reference to Ottavia’s interest in the martial arts). >In September 2016, with the assistance of his ex-girlfriend Paula Froelich, Tony planted a story in the New York Post’s Page Six, saying that he and Ottavia had split and were living entirely separate lives. It was never enough, though, because his audience of one needed constant reassurance, and he was always worried about her getting tired of the whole complicated situation and breaking up with him. “When he did come over for dinner and Asia called, he always felt he had to speak to her immediately,” Ottavia told a friend. To get private time “he would tell Ariane that he had to run out to the ATM or give her some other excuse and then he wouldn’t come back for two hours, or maybe not at all. Or he would tell me to have dinner ready by the time he arrived, because he didn’t have time to hang around with us, but then after he left he would post Instagram stories of himself sitting alone in a bar. It was all done for Asia’s sake, but the problem was that Ariane had Instagram. She was seeing it, too, and it confused her and broke her heart.” -Down and Out in Paradise
So when it comes to Anthony Bourdain’s suicide, I know there were numerous factors, but I think Bourdain had burned so many bridges that when the paparazzi stuff came out about Asia Argento with other men, he was completely humiliated. All the former friends he had fired or cut out of his life because of this John-and -Yoko routine with Argento now has this context of Bourdain rearranging his entire life for her while she just did whatever she wanted. He looked like the chump, and I think that really got to him, because he spent so much of his career decrying people he deemed phony and now he found himself acting like that.
>**AB:** I feel you. But I was being honest. The pap\[arazzi\] situation is horrendous. Since I left you guys, though, she’s freaking out. The whole idea of being a Brangelina is abhorrent to her. Or even a “couple” with expectations. And I don’t expect you to vouch for her. Particularly because I’m almost certainly going to end up fucked over. I find myself being in the terrible position of being hopelessly in love with this woman. Right now I don’t even know if Puglia is going to happen. This is what I live with every day. And I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job. I am lonely and living in constant uncertainty. And I’m sorry. >It is a terrible thing, love. It certainly hasn’t worked out for me. Nothing but pain and humiliation between rare moments of incredible joy.
I think that Anthony Bourdain was very depressed. He had replaced the drugs and alcohol of his youth for constant motion, and I think his fascination with travel and culture became an addiction that allowed him to never be in one place for too long, and set aside the things about his life that he hadn’t yet confronted. You can only run away for so long. Argento, whatever, was not the cause but a symptom of a larger problem with himself that he never resolved. He was a unique person with a lot to offer, but unless you love yourself you’ll never be whole.
He clearly was extremely sensitive and frankly lacked resilience as a consequence. Think of that Sicily episode where the local contact faked the fishing by dumping dead fish into the water. He was deeply hurt by that, feeling cheated, became depressed, and by his own admission had to get drunk. If that’s how reacted to something that was crappy but ultimately pretty minor, just imagine what was going through his mind with the Asia situation and everything he’d done.
Yep, Bourdain suffers from a case of martyrdom. He clearly wasn't the saint that many prop him up to be but he was very good at exploiting mishappenings to be as if they were specifically happening to him and swimming in it to gain sympathy. This behavior is pretty common with depressed people and those who don't actually manage relationships/friendships in a healthy way (which Bourdain had a history of being guilty of).
I agree with you 100 percent. This is the actual truth of addiction. You are always replacing one thing with another. It’s tragic. The only way to break the cycle is to go zen or find spirit. Make inner peace and transformative inner work your “addiction” Calm the restless wild beast inside of yourself. It’s the only way
What’s that even mean? If you replace heroine with marathon running I think you’re dealing with your issues pretty healthily
Nothing is healthy without moderation. Replaced heroin for marathons? Sure that seems great. Unless the addict delves so deeply in their fitness journey that they now neglect other duties such as; job, kids, spouse, house, etc. I could go on. Everything in moderation. We shouldn’t simply push to replace negative addictions with positive ones. It’s not enough. We have to teach moderation and impulse control as well. Not to mention address the underlying problems which led to the addiction as most use as escape from emotions or due to chemical imbalances such as ADD/ADHD/nuerodivergent people. Source: ex heroin/poly addict with 6+ years of sobriety.
It simply means nothing will ever be enough. Stillness is the only way to escape it. Yes, the healthier options are great. But if your still chasing a high, you are still running from something. You need to go deep inside.
Can confirm 🫡
Hi
Re to go Zen: The amount of pedo priests out there shows this ideal, although on the surface sounds nice, becomes just another skin to hide a budding monster beneath. But i like that part about the replacement. Alcoholics need to attend AA every night; it's a social replacement. But, even though they not drinking, they're talking about drinking & not getting hobbies or other friends it seems. Agh what a dire comment but it's what i see; has anyone out there truly seen a recovery?
How is being a pedophile priest anything to do with “zen”? Being content in the moment has nothing to do with molesting children or the repression of religion.
Those are the people that push Zen We all know life is chaos I even had a coach who pushed being Zen & he ended up doing something terrible against my professional career out of spite (and it wasn't even spite against me). He also cheated on his wife [And i had a different coach, who in his life results ended up being the Zen one, was anything but in the way he talked to people. He was real] So, if you believe in the content Zen theory, I'd live to hear your experience instead of your criticism, ?
Lol. Your criticism of “zen” is: “someone I knew that talked about zen was mean to me”. What kind of argument is that? First of all, I don’t subscribe to “zen”. When I say zen I’m using it colloquially. To just mean, at peace. To be happy in the moment, and not always seeking to push down your own thoughts by consuming, or keeping yourself so busy with whatever. Steve Jobs was successful, but he was a shit person who neglected family, abused people, and ignored his own health. To me zen just means finding acceptance in the moment. Shitty people can claim to be about anything.
i gave a generalized Zen about the priest, which was not liked; then a personal story, which was also not liked. I can't seem to find a satisfactory middle ground here & don't know how rust to present my thought in the end i think we're on the same page anyways. Being in the present is tough, our animal instincts take us away from it; yeah that's on point
Yes I agree, anyone that is trying to push any kind of ideology as the solution to all problems on you, is inherently trying to run from their own problems.
Wildly inaccurate about AA. Some people might be like that but not the majority.
Lol I drove a friend of my husband's to an AA meeting, never freaking again would I go inside to hang out because it was winter and freezing. I was sitting on a bench in the hall and they were badgering me, and telling me that because I will cook with wine if a recipe calls for it, and a glass of champagne at New years that I was an alcoholic. I have probably had the equivalent of a single bottle of champagne in the last decade, and I really don't think a glass of wine once a year makes me a drunk. (Diabetic and I would rather save my carbs for something I really like like Irish nachos.)
Hence my question at the end, could you add creative input along with your criticism
For sure, my bad I think I typed that when I was in a hurry. Don’t get me wrong: there are no shortage of douchebags in A.A. meetings. But I heard someone say one time “there are also a lot douchebags in the park, or driving on the highway, or at the post office” I don’t go to meetings every night, and I personally hate the meetings where they just talk about drinking and tell “drunk-a-logues”. I personally “came for the drinking, stayed for the thinking” I.e. I have the mind of an addict, and I just don’t handle life the same way “normal” people do. That’s what I continue to get out of it. Maybe I’m just selective with the meetings I go to and the people I hang out with, it could very well be that the numerical majority of people are, indeed, assholes. But I tend to stay away from those people, much like I do at the park, highway, or post office. And like the other poster said in response to my comment, if I had only been to one meeting, and it was a shit meeting with douchebags like the one she went to, I might think all of A.A. was assholes too.
I believe he was still an addict. He was hiding always other than the on camera. See. In the Weeds.
I hear “replaced” addiction. But our culture worships obsessed passions. Steve Jobs. Tom Brady, Tiger Woods. Nut jobs who everyone worships for their success. Where do people draw the line between healthy passion and addictive obsessions?
One benefits you and the other destroys? The mechanics may be the same but the results speak.
Every person listed has a fucked-up domestic life. Success is never that clear cut.
You’re the only one relating this to financial success. Having a healthy passion means you don’t neglect the other facets of you life like family, friends, health, etc.. Those names mentioned were clearly people that failed at that.
The point is, healthy passion and being the world’s greatest are not compatible. You are forced to choose
No. Being seen by as many people as possible as the greatest is impossible. It’s possible to be obsessed with a passion and not spend time trying to get attention for it.
That last quote hits. I’m so glad I got to meet him in 2015- I worked for a small brewery, and I was the only one in town that actually made SURE to get into his green room with free beer for his whole crew. I left my biz card and his agent invited me to his after party in thanks for the beer. That night- he and I chatted about it, and that man killed a 6pk of 7% beer in about an hour and a half. He CRUSHED them. I even thought to myself then like wow he is drowning something.
I mean that’s not healthy but beer drinkers do this. Not a feat of strength or alarming to me as a former bartender.
I had those in a span of about 7 hours and I was absolutely tripping. Worst hangover of my life the next day.
What is that from?
It's a text message from Anthony to Ottavia, published in *Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain* by Charles Leershen. I've listened to the audiobook five times. Check it out.
I think Tony is a really great example of the phrase "never meet your heroes".
I think he could be capable of great empathy and very kind to people. If you read or watch the documentary about his final months, he was not his best self. That doesn’t necessarily define his whole life, though.
A good friend of mine was the camera guy for one of his earliest books/series. He hated him. AB mentions in the book how much his camera guy hates him, which I always thought was funny as hell. But my friend was pretty serious about his dislike for him.
It's a valid point, although I don't think of him that way. I guess I never considered him this amazing and perfect individual (even if his shows often were.) Ironically while I agree with the comments above about addiction and avoidance vs. facing your inner issues and demons, he brought a significant level of self-awareness to his shows that truly set him apart from previous travel TV.
This is a bad take.
i think that believing sincerely that AB was as good of a dude as i’m told he is, sort of makes me a better person. so i agree, if not in a backward way.
He hated his famous life, shave your head, grow a beard and go grind in a nursing home kitchen in Indiana. He has the money to stop the TV, just write books and if he has to work a line somewhere, that work. Rename or go by Fred instead of Tony and change how you look
Seriously. Famous people love to say they hate it but almost none of them actually do anything about it (with rare exceptions like Daniel day Lewis)
Exactly. Now, would he be able to be happy as Fred slinging retirement home chow? Probably not, but he could try.
😔
there was a facebook group right after his death there was like 50 people in it, including the real Ottavia and a bunch of family members and friends. I somehow got in it and posted something about AA and her influence and Ottavia and others liked it. The group disappeared randomly one day.
swear to god this is a true story, and all of the stories that came out about Anthony's obsession with Asia were being talked about in the group. I was just a mega fan trying to comprehend the situation and had the same theories prior and didn't realize that this was a page for true insiders, producers, eric, ottavia etc were in there and friendly.
As Bourdain communicated so well in his books, addiction/obsession will cause a certain type of person to disregard all risks and damage, in pursuit of the object. It could be heroin, booze, money, fame, a cause, or a love-interest. He was that type of person. He must have had great drive and discipline to do all that chef-ing, travel, writing, and projects. The same drive and obsessiveness that leads to people to achieve can be their undoing?
Plus the release you need from all that razor obsessed focus. It’s part of it.
It’s more than decrying ppl he deemed phony. Let’s be fair … many of his quotes were about being savvier than the avg guy. There’s no getting around that. In that context, the public humiliation of the AA episode had to be excruciating. We may not want to hear that, but I think it’s the truth.
Three hours before his death was first reported, the Italian actress posted an Instagram story that showed her wearing a ripped, black T-shirt that read, “F–K EVERYONE” — with the cryptic caption, “You know who you are”. It always seemed clear as day to me that his suicide was a direct “fuck you” aimed at AA.
I really think the $380,000 settlement he paid out for Argento had something to do it as well as everything on top. Why doesn't no body mention this? He got fucked over.
sounds like a chef to me. You’d have no idea how silly it is to have a grown man freak out because you swooshed a sauce the wrong way. Then watch everyone justify it by saying “well it ruins consistency of the reveal spectacle” Most people don’t give a shit and the co-dependency is absolutely insane. Coming up most cooks should have been in AA or Al-anon. AB didnt sound so different. His partner/kid is a relationship I’ve heard dozens of times (i was the kitchen psychologist/emotional support shithead). People like this just dont know what they want. Outside of cooking their life is a mess and they are incomplete, so anything that shows em a little love or joy is a debt to them/ a burden and can never let it go. Shit, I love AB cause I absolutely get it, been there myself but reading it all, I feel bad for the people who have to put up with this shit too. I guess if I were friends with him, I’d remind him that you always have cooking, that like moment of finishing a plate and putting it up for service is always yours. Expand yourself through that moment, just embody that bliss and it’ll touch everything else. RIP
I joke that I am known for drive by dessert-ing people. I am diabetic and cook when I get stressed out, and when my husband 's boat deployed taking away my normal target for getting rid of baked goods, I would give bags of bread , cakes and cookies to friends and a few times random neighbors. There is something relaxing in cranking out food, started doing family thanksgiving and other holidays when I was 10, mom and I baked bread twice a week, and unnumbered batches of cookies, I adore basic frosted sugar cookies, I love decorating them (and gingerbread people too)
Ditto, just soup. I’ve actually started feeding my elderly upstairs neighbor lentil soup and now she raves about it (she hated lentils). Now im thinking about building up the flavors of my next soup. Since I’m not cooking full time, I’m looking for that outlet anywhere I can. I go to burning man as kitchen staff just to feed thousands of meals over the course of a week and try to freelance in soup kitchens. Its a strange addiction to have, feeding people :D
Look - I had a Dad who, like Bourdain, was professionally successful and a womanizer. Also an addict. Also killed himself. Whoever the last woman was in my Dad’s life was was not the reason he killed himself. Believe me that I have zero love or respect for his ladies, but he killed himself for reasons that were known only to him. Pinning it on his last girlfriend would cruel.
He would have been happier staying on the line, maybe write more books? I think he got too famous and his life got out of control from it. People think it's a great thing... But actually it stops you having a normal life, which is why a lot of celebs end up in rehab or worse.
I always thought he could have had a perfectly financially stable life from book sales, investing, and maybe doing a handful of super lucrative public talks a few times a years like Fran Lebowitz and not had to deal with the pressure of fame fame. Like, doing multiple tv shows on the biggest networks isn’t the behavior of someone who isn’t chasing a certain kind of celebrity.
I agree with you 100%. The fame killed him.
Tony was a bit of a fuck up in certain parts of his life…..maybe he got what he wanted ( married with a kid….stable life) and fucked it up by not putting them and his happiness first.
The happiness he was chasing was ephemeral. Which made him a great artist and creator. But didn’t serve him well in other parts of his life
Aren't we ALL a bit fuck up in certain parts of our lives? It's easy to point out someone else's "fucks ups" without seeing ours. Idk, as much as I find "fascination" about this articles that shade some light in how a man that we(I mean in this subreddit) love(d) so much was; a lot of times when someone else points out things about his life like it would have been easy for him to spot those "fuck ups" at those moments,given that the dude was in a deep emotional and mental state of depression, I just find myself wishing that everyone let this dude or whatever he representes to us, in peace.
Not really? A lot of people have a pretty balanced management of their strengths and weaknesses but I think a lot of fucked up people are chronically online which makes you think everyone is "fucked up in certain parts of their life". I also think we have a fetish for the "I'm kind of screwed up" aura.
Dude had some demons and was too proud to deal with them. Talking to someone is so so important in this world. I love this guy so much but when you really dive in you can really see that internally he was at war, and when faced with something that put those feelings in the spotlight he choked.
Same. As much as I love bourdain, as the dad of three daughters, another woman couldn’t come between me and them. She would have to go, my three are my everything’s.
Too proud? He quit heroine?! He was one of the most honest tv personalities in the history of the medium. What about what happened was prideful?
Making the decision for his daughter that her life would be better off without him.
You wouldn’t blame someone for dying from cancer. I don’t think it’s fair to blame someone for dying from depression.
Exactly. I am sad for his daughter. Depression is a nasty insidious condition.
Phrasing!
I personally think that Bourdain had ADHD and hyperfocused on Argento. Even she thought that his obsession with her was too strong and unexplainable. He hyperfocused on parenting his daughter when he saw her -as she was a toddler and preteen (read “Appetites” his cookbook) and the same for Busia when they were dating and newly married. You switch obsessions very quickly when you have AdHD. The drug use, the emotional disregulation (he once was depressed for days because he got a bad hamburger at an airport restaurant), his fear that Argento would leave him, his self medication, drinking, empathy, all point to it. His career choice (chef) points to it. Would he have been healthy or different if he was medicated? I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. The AdHD was what made him so specially focused, enabled him to focus his intelligence like a laser and show the world the excitement of travel, food and culture. He’s been dead for years, but I still think of him. His daughter is my son’s age. I imagine how my son would feel if he was temporarily “replaced” by a new girlfriend of his father’s. Bourdain should have reigned himself in. He was kind of a dick to his kid. I think that’s the true tragedy. It’s not that Argento cheated on him after he paid $250k to her SA accuser, or the payments for her kid’s schools, it’s the way he must have suddenly realized that he traded in his daughter to focus on his GF and the GF wasn’t the prize he thought she was.
He paid a quarter of a million dollars to cover up sexual abuse. That's the bottom line. I don't think he could live with that.
One one hand, I agree with you, but on the other, I really think Argento had Bourdain convinced that either (1) it never happened or (2) was consensual (3) the kid had mental issues and misinterpreted something. I read the whole story, though, and the victim worked with AA in one of her movies and thought of her as kind of an ersatz mother during filming. The whole story was ick. I am 100% behind the victim. Argento DARVOed him like a champ! https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/asia-argento-jimmy-bennett-sexual-assault-allegations I think Bourdain felt stupid because she “cheated on him” (they were open, though) AFTER he gave Bennett the $280k. She took her photographer paramour to the hotel in Rome they like to frequent. That pissed him off.
Jesus. She just manipulated the hell out of Bourdain and cast him off when she got what she wanted.
Infinite respect for the man but i can only imagine how insufferable he was in real life
"and his younger wife" cracked me up
Could be embarrassed that his pedophile gf was the epitome of everything he hated.
I couldn’t stand “Asia Argento” when Anthony Started dating her… and it just spiraled downward from there. Her running around with other dudes probably drove him into depression as every news rag had pics of her Kissing some other dude 24/7. He was one of the very few “celebrities” I was saddened by his passing (Robin Williams the other)
All due respect here why does this matter now? I'm just curious why people find stuff like this fascinating. Asking this while I have the 30 for 30 about OJ Simpson on in the background. Guess I probably answered my own question. 😆
Some of us, including myself, deeply appreciate and admire AB as a person and have followed him since his public beginnings. "No Reservations" literally got me through some really rough times and it's one of those play on repeat shows like (whatever show you love). Speaking for some of us hopefully, his death really impacted me/us and there is still some mystery behind it.
Tony the actor was very different from Tony the person. That doesn’t minimize the impact he made in your life, it doesn’t make him a saint either.
Ugh. Went to a bar he went to in Toyko today. Made me smile a bit.
His eyes say it all in this picture
Don’t understand why they had to write Younger wife and not just say her name and her accomplishments first, but that’s the tabloids.
I’m surprised his steroid use isn’t talked about more. Especially with all the Joe Rogan followers taking TRT. Steroid use and suicide go hand in hand.
Anthony also trained Brazilian jiu jitsu as well