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Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
NOW SHOWING IN MSP FILM'S ST. ANTHONY MAIN THEATRE
About the Film
Academy Award®-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) reveals how Anthony Bourdain went from chef at an obscure New York restaurant to one of the most notorious and beloved figures in the food world and beyond. Following Bourdain from the legendary New York dive bar Siberia to a perfect lunch in Provence with Michelin-starred chef Éric Ripert, Roadrunner traces the singular trajectory of Bourdain’s career as a bestselling author, world traveler and Emmy®-winning television writer and producer. A nuanced portrait of a complex, contradictory and charismatic storyteller, Roadrunner is a fitting tribute to the man who reinvented cultural storytelling – and himself – over and over again.
Profane, opinionated and boundlessly inquisitive, the late writer Anthony Bourdain changed the world of food and travel reporting with his unique blend of curiosity, wit and unapologetic authenticity. In the new documentary Roadrunner, Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Best of Enemies) tells the story of Bourdain’s warp-speed transformation from line cook to globally-renowned cultural commentator. With an often lyrical writing style that mingled punk defiance and Beat rebellion, and a palate that seemed to know no bounds, Bourdain dazzled readers with his debut memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2007), and changed his own life forever.
In a story that begins in 1999, when the then-43-year-old Bourdain shocked the culinary world by revealing long-held restaurant secrets, Neville follows the quixotic path of the chef’s career, exploring the route he took to become the beloved star and award-winning creator of numerous food and travels series for television. From haute cuisine in Rome, Melbourne and Tokyo to danger in Port-au-Prince, Kinshasa and Beirut, Bourdain pushes himself and his crew past their limits, exploring culture and cuisine with his restless curiosity. Then, at the height of his fame, he turns his seemingly inexhaustible energy to domestic life with his wife and child, and calling attention to cultural, social and political injustices at home and abroad — before shocking the world by dying by suicide at the age of 61.
Drawing on previously unseen footage from Bourdain’s television shows, all-new interviews with his friends and family, and Bourdain’s own wry and instantly recognizable voiceovers, Neville creates an unforgettable record of an extraordinary man’s unexpected rise to stardom as a celebrity chef, book author, journalist and travel documentarian.
Extraordinary foreign films, must-see American indies, and groundbreaking documentaries from around the world, screening weekly at MSP Film Society.
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