In honor of the late Anthony Bourdain, we thought it would be a good idea to sit down and talk about him and his life with our late friend, Tony Bourdain. In this episode, we talk about Bourdain's life, his career, and how he became one of the most influential people in the world. We talk about how he got started with his career and what it was like to work with him. We also talk about the early days of working with Bourdain on his first TV show, Meat Eater, and some of the iconic moments they shared on the show. We also discuss Bourdain s life and the impact he had on the world and the people he met along the way. We hope you enjoy this episode and remember him with love and respect. Thank you to our friend Tony. We'll see you soon! -Jon Sorrentino Timestamps: 4:30 - Meat Eater 8:00 - Parts Unknown 12:00- Parts Unknown 16:00 Meat Eater 20:00s - Bourdain and his legacy 22:40 - The Bourdain Experience 27:30s - The life and career of Anthony 38:00 | Parts Unknown 39:40s - What's next? 40:40 41:30 42:20 45:00 What s next for the Bourdain legacy? 47:20s - Who was your favorite Bourdain? Theme song by Ian Dorsch? 48:30 | Theme Song by Jeffree Starretta_ Theme music by Skynyrd ? Music by: Jeffree_ Theme by: "Goodbye" by: by ? ? & ? by "The Good Lady" by (feat. ? & & "Outro music by ) by , ? by . and is by (c) by "Outtro music by "Avenger " by "Solo" by "Brujor ) , "The Bad Girl" by Jeff Perla ( ) by "Mr. ( ) & ( ) and "Savage . ( ) ? ( in honor of him ( ) ( ) and (?) by The Bad Girl ( ) is out on the road? & / #
00:02:11.000And then there was this seminal moment on that show where we go out and we go ripping across the desert with the Bedouin and go out and cook a goat in the ground.
00:02:25.000And so as we're driving out over the desert, we're like, well, we need some shots from car to car, right?
00:02:30.000And I was like, well, I'll get on the roof.
00:02:32.000And for some reason, there's a four-post bed tied to the roof of this Land Rover.
00:02:39.000And so I get up there and kind of latch my arm around it.
00:02:43.000And these guys take off at, I swear, 80 miles an hour across the desert.
00:04:54.000You know, really climbing into Japanese subcultures, rope bondage, tentacle porn, you know, all this stuff that most network executives are probably a little bit leery of.
00:05:07.000You know, CNN was kind of like, you know, go for it, man.
00:05:09.000Be yourself, you know, and let's figure out what this is together.
00:05:15.000And one of the things that really made that show was Tony's narration.
00:05:19.000Because the narration gave you a sense of the way his sort of passion and enthusiasm for the world and for various aspects of cooking and travel and food and culture.
00:05:30.000Like you got it through his own words, you know?
00:05:33.000Yeah, I think that's, I mean, it may be in some ways the most important aspect of the show.
00:05:39.000You know, I mean, he is after all a writer, right?
00:05:43.000And that is how he experienced the world.
00:05:48.000But actually making the shows and the technical part of actually making the shows, you know, we'd...
00:05:54.000Once you'd go through and kind of edit the show, none of that voiceover was in at the rough cut phase.
00:06:02.000And he'd send it out to him and get his writing back and record that VO. And I keep describing it as like that kind of Dr. Frankenstein lightning bolt to the temples kind of moment where like the monster rises.
00:06:14.000It would really just bring the show to life.
00:06:17.000So this kind of Carcass that was laid out in rough cut form on the table all of a sudden just gasped and jumped up and you know it was really beautiful like to see that and to have you know as a director, as a producer, as a creative you know at any level you know to have that kind of power to have his voice and his writing and his introspection and thoughts and you know that would have like powerful you know powerful force to work with.
00:06:48.000Well, it was a brilliant design, the way the show was put together.
00:06:51.000That narration really did make it something special and different from all those other kinds of shows because just his articulate and insightful and poetic and artistic view of these things, that he had this infectious passion for things.
00:07:07.000He completely changed the way I thought about cooking.
00:07:10.000I'd always thought about cooking as, oh, this guy knows how to make delicious food.
00:07:27.000Yeah, and even beyond that, it's an art form that's taking and incorporating all of these greater kind of macro-social elements of where you are, the history of where you are, what people did for a living,
00:07:42.000what people's ancestors did for a living.
00:08:59.000It's like, it's easy to, you know, to look at these kind of high-end French preparations, these highly talented, you know, highly trained French chefs.
00:09:10.000And there's tremendous beauty in that and all of those other things we talked about.
00:09:15.000To look at the woman on the corner that's making the best lingua tacos, that was revolutionary.
00:09:26.000And then the realization that all of that greatness, all of that nuance, all of that flavor contained right within there.
00:09:37.000That was an access point to it as well.
00:09:39.000It's just an access point that everyone can afford, that everyone can go in.
00:09:44.000And, you know, I mean, right place at the right time.
00:09:47.000I think that people, like, it seems like the culture at large was ready for that, ready for that, like, experience in food and ready to kind of chase that.
00:09:56.000Because now, I mean, that's all anyone wants now.
00:11:07.000You know, most of them are accidentally stumbling into some place where someone's doing something completely awesome that isn't, you know, some massive 26-course tasting menu, you know.
00:11:19.000And I think it's also about, you know, it's about place, you know?
00:11:24.000It's about where you are, the context of where you are, what it smells like, what it sounds like, what it looks like, you know, who you're with, you know?
00:11:34.000And so, you know, that's kind of, I think, another reason the show kind of worked is we had an opportunity to articulate all of those things.
00:11:45.000We're able to choose an incredibly interesting guest to sit down with at a really interesting restaurant with, you know, people cooking of a really interesting backstory in a beautiful place and then use the power of kind of the magic of TV to,
00:12:01.000you know, to polish it up and present this version of travel and food in the world that...
00:12:09.000I mean, you guys covered Asia, you covered Europe, you covered some weird places in the South where people were cooking pigs in their backyard.
00:12:17.000I mean, it was just, it gave people an understanding of the preparation of food and a view to chefs.
00:12:41.000And I think, too, I mean, you know, what I kind of love about, like, you know, at this point spent a good amount of time in kitchens and a good amount of time around kitchen staff is there's kind of two elements coming together.
00:12:54.000There's the artistic element that you're talking about, right?
00:12:59.000But there's also this very, you know, very earnest working class kind of element to the way a kitchen works, you know?
00:13:10.000Work, you know, it's a rough environment, you know, and I think that's kind of part of what makes it so appealing to us.
00:13:19.000He kind of pulled back the curtain on that, you know, and say, like, these guys are, you know...
00:13:26.000These guys are not these inaccessible icons, the Paul Bocuse of the world.
00:13:30.000They are, as much as Paul Bocuse is awesome, they are these kind of rough and tumble guys that are back there making something really awesome.
00:13:43.000Tony also had this sort of punk rock sensibility to it all, too.
00:13:48.000You know, I mean, that was part of the thing about him that people found appealing is that they had seen cooking shows before, but they never saw cooking shows where the host gets fucked up.
00:13:57.000You know, like, dude, I was, first time I partied with him, I'm like, this guy goes so hard!
00:14:06.000I was like, I can't believe he can do this all the time.
00:14:08.000Like, I think one of the first times we ever got hung out together was in Montreal.
00:14:15.000We were there for UFC fights and we went out afterwards and we had some steaks and it was just amazing walking into this restaurant and people freaking out.
00:14:23.000One guy actually had a copy of Kitchen Confidential in the actual kitchen itself and had Tony sign it.
00:14:54.000Well, their show, one of the ones that I really loved was the one where they did ice fishing.
00:15:01.000They were on the water, and they had this ice fishing shack, but inside the ice fishing shack they had fine silverware and fine china, and they had bottles of really excellent wine, and they were cooking on a wood stove.
00:15:13.000They had a wood stove, and they were cooking foie gras right there on the stove.
00:15:19.000And then they were laying out what they think makes you a good dinner companion.
00:15:24.000And, you know, Dave was like, I shut my phone off.
00:15:44.000Not really a performance, but it's an agreement that you're gonna you're gonna go there and you're gonna share this enthusiasm for this experience together and you're gonna try to enhance it with your own anecdotes and personality and your own Appreciation for the food and the wine and and then afterwards they're smoking Cuban cigars It's like the whole thing is it made you want to go eat at a really good place Yeah,
00:16:07.000or in a, you know, in a shack, you know, with people who understand that there's an elegance to all of these things, you know, that you can create an environment that has an elegance.
00:16:21.000And that's You know, I'd say that's like a hallmark of a lot of the chefs that I've met through the show is like, you will see that, you know, no matter how big they get, no matter how successful, there is an inherent kind of desire to please on multiple levels,
00:18:41.000You know, just sunk, sunk a pit in my stomach, and I just, I just picked up my phone, I went into Google, and I looked it up, and I saw it, and I'm just like, oh, fuck.
00:22:50.000For a long time on the show, that was a mandate.
00:22:52.000We find the local clubs and make sure that he had a place to roll.
00:22:57.000He texted me from some European block country.
00:23:00.000He said he was shitting bone chips because he worked out with some old school Carlson Gracie guys that they don't I believe in rolling light and it's all top game and smashing you.
00:23:10.000And he's like, I'm shitting bone chips.
00:23:12.000But I admired that a guy could be 58 years old and decide, I'm going to learn jujitsu and I'm going to be obsessed with it.
00:23:20.000And then he became addicted to it, which, you know, jujitsu is a very beneficial thing to be addicted to, but it is absolutely an addiction.
00:23:28.000I've come back from injuries where I definitely shouldn't have been training yet, and I just wrap my arm up and just fucking get in there.
00:23:35.000People get super, super addicted to it, and he got addicted to it, just like he's been addicted to many things.
00:23:40.000He jumped right into the jujitsu experience.
00:24:22.000And also just, you know, the whole thing was kind of indicative of the way he...
00:24:27.000I mean, he did things so passionately, you know, whether it was travel and the world and soaking up all these experiences or jujitsu or whatever.
00:24:36.000If he was into something, if something caught his attention, he was just so aggressive about...
00:24:43.000Knowledge, learning what he could, pulling everything out of it that he could.
00:24:48.000It's just crazy to see someone do something that's that physically demanding at 58 with no background in athletics at all.
00:24:55.000You could see when he was doing things, like when he went to Kurt Osiander's place and was rolling around, he doesn't have a background in that, but he's just pushing himself to it.
00:25:04.000Yeah, and again, I think that was true with everything.
00:25:08.000If it was something that was interesting to him, he just went.
00:26:14.000It's just different for a guy who's 58. I mean, a guy who does it at 20, I admire anybody who does jiu-jitsu because it's a real humbling, ego-dissolving experience in a lot of ways because it makes you realize, like, all your illusions of how well you can defend yourself, they go out the window when someone just chokes you easily.
00:26:34.000Running around this life thinking I'm a man.
00:26:36.000But the fact that he did it at 58 just showed what kind of an unusual dude he was.
00:26:41.000Yeah, but what you just talked about there, I mean, what you were talking about with the ego-diminishing aspect of it, again, I think that that was something that he took great pleasure in.
00:26:50.000And I think that if you look at the way he went through the world, one of the things that I appreciated right off the bat and one of the things that kept me around as long as I stayed around, you know, For Tony,
00:27:07.000I think that he was constantly trying to dismantle that persona.
00:27:13.000To say, I'm not the focal point of this scene.
00:27:18.000What we're interested in here, what I'm interested in talking about is out there.
00:27:25.000He was kind of a clearinghouse for all that information, and he was the root of the show, and it was his journey.
00:27:35.000Ultimately, what was refreshing is he wasn't working with some celebrity or host that was completely consumed by their own ego and their own brand and how they were presented to the world.
00:29:01.000I mean, what worked about that is he had, like, an instant ability to sniff through the bullshit, you know?
00:29:08.000So, you know, listen, there's all kinds of famous people, celebrities, you know, well-accomplished people that he met that he didn't feel that way about, you know?
00:29:17.000He would cut through that shit instantly.
00:29:21.000But if you were on his radar in that way, you know...
00:29:25.000It's like total commitment to what you do.
00:29:28.000You were in or you're out of the Anthony Bourdain club.
00:30:25.000And a really interesting, thoughtful dialogue around the campfire with Land Townie from Backwoods Country Hunters and Anglers and all these other guys that were with us.
00:30:35.000You know, these guys who, it was good to get a different perspective on what going out and getting your own wild food is like.
00:31:21.000How did it wind up at CNN? Were there some other options?
00:31:24.000Because I know he had a giant problem with the Travel Channel because I know he had told me that they fucked him over and did some Cadillac ad.
00:31:31.000Yeah, I know he was really pissed about the Cadillac ad.
00:31:36.000Honestly, I don't really know a lot of the details of the whole story.
00:31:40.000I don't know what other deals were on the table besides CNN. But it's safe to say that I think the relationship with Travel Channel was toxic before that.
00:31:49.000Travel Channel is a religious-owned place.
00:31:55.000I think the original people that owned it, because my friend Bert Kreischer has a show over there, or had a show over there, a couple shows.
00:32:00.000Bert the Conqueror, and what was his other show?
00:32:06.000But, you know, Bert had issues with that too.
00:32:08.000Like, when he would be on the show, if we'd all be hanging out together, if he wanted to smoke pot, he had to make sure that Jamie turned the camera away from him.
00:32:45.000They're the dumbest fucking shows on television, and there's like a hundred of them.
00:32:50.000But the thing is, if you're watching, everybody's scared of ghosts.
00:32:54.000So if you're watching, and there's some people, and they're in the basement, and they have night vision on, and they pretend they see something, you're like, what are they seeing?
00:34:11.000They don't want cinematography and art.
00:34:15.000You know, they want, listen, man, they want some kid producer, director, slash cinematographer that they can, you know, they don't want what we do.
00:36:14.000No, man, but, you know, like, that's exactly the way it was.
00:36:17.000You go up there, and you'd be in, you know, six days of rain, but all of a sudden, you know, the fog would clear, and there's some, you know, blacktails standing right there looking at you, you know?
00:36:58.000You'd do that for 20 minutes, you'd start heaving, you'd be drenched in sweat, you'd want to take your jacket off, and then you realize like, oh my god, I have to do this for eight more hours?
00:37:15.000Like you said, you can't train for it.
00:37:17.000You can't train for that kind of backcountry stuff.
00:37:19.000You can go out and run up and down the Stairmaster or whatever, but it doesn't train all those little muscles that you use to constantly stabilize yourself.
00:38:31.000You know, it's interesting, though, because I think back on those times, like, you know, like, while we're talking about, like, all the shitty weather and all that stuff, and I just think back to that.
00:38:39.000The first time I went out with Steve, him saying, like, yeah, dude, but you won't, you know, you never tell stories about the good days, you know?
00:38:47.000And I gotta say, to his credit, that's been absolutely true.
00:38:51.000Those shitty days, freezing cold, getting out of your sleeping bag in the morning and putting on wet clothes, cold wet clothes to go out and hunt all day.
00:39:04.000I look back on that with a great degree of fondness.
00:39:07.000And I also have to say, it made me a lot more of a person than I was before.
00:39:32.000We all have that somewhere back down in the brainstem, this idea, this ability to just go out in the woods and hunt something and eat it.
00:39:43.000And up until that point, I had never done that.
00:39:45.000I'd done some hiking and some camping.
00:39:47.000It was always on trails, and they're all nicely marked and stuff like that.
00:39:50.000The idea of stepping out of the back door of Steve's cabin and just into the woods, at that time for me when I first did it, that was completely new.
00:39:58.000I was like, well, you can just walk into the woods?
00:40:05.000And then to do it and to have it be successful and to bring that animal back and to sit around and eat it and all that stuff, that was a real huge aha moment for me, personally and professionally.
00:40:17.000Like, oh, we can do shit that we used to do 10,000 years ago.
00:40:23.000I remember saying that on the show, like when Steve was asking me and Brian on the first hunt, which just by sheer luck, we were both successful on the first hunt.
00:40:32.000And Steve was like, do you think you're going to do it again?
00:40:35.000I said, fuck yeah, I'm doing this forever.
00:40:59.000Because in its worst cases, that's true.
00:41:03.000Yeah, and because I do think that hunting shows for years, that's a lot of what they put forward, was, like, kind of machismo and guys shooting, you know...
00:41:12.000Black bears over, you know, donut barrels, you know, for all the wrong reasons, you know?
00:41:18.000But at least we think of that as something that people, or at least I do, think of that as something that people eat for food.
00:41:23.000When you think about Cecil, like Cecil the Lion, like that kind of shit really sours people on the idea of hunting because there's no justification for the average person for shooting a lion.
00:42:28.000But game animals that are delicious, Neil Guy, things like that, that people have eaten forever and that they hunt just like they hunt elk or deer here.
00:43:37.000But I think worse than any of that, there's a huge culture of non-profit organizations and stuff there.
00:43:44.000So I think they're used to kind of white folks coming in with this very patronizing kind of view.
00:43:50.000And then we're down there with cameras filming them, and then all of a sudden they realize that we're not paying anyone for this, you know?
00:43:58.000And I think, you know, there's a tendency for people to feel like, well, you're here taking something from us, you know?
00:44:05.000You're clearly making more money than any of us will ever, you know, be able to make, and what the fuck do we get for it, you know?
00:44:12.000And I can understand that point of view.
00:44:14.000And how did it turn into them throwing rocks at you guys?
00:44:17.000Again, they realized that we weren't going to be paying for any of this.
00:44:21.000Our security team was like, hey guys, time to get in the car.
00:44:25.000As soon as you get in the car and you're leaving, it's like, oh, these fucking assholes, man.
00:44:30.000They just came down here, got all their footage, and they're going to pack up and go back to their nice hotel.
00:45:18.000This is a culture that will fight through anything.
00:45:22.000Go to Lagos, and Lagos is one of the most dynamic cities I've ever been in.
00:45:27.000There's constantly moving, constantly people trying to make money, constantly people trying to find a niche in a city of 20 million people.
00:45:37.000I find a lot of beauty in just raw human endeavor there.
00:45:41.000And I think that if they can clear some of the obvious stumbling blocks that they have in terms of corruption, in terms of foreign pressure, in terms of manipulation of markets, there's tremendous promise there.
00:45:59.000I mean, just in terms of the internet and technology sector in Africa is absolutely booming.
00:46:08.000You have kids that come in from the villages on the streets of Legos who can take your computer apart and rebuild it by hand.
00:46:36.000But I can say that about traveling the world kind of in general.
00:46:39.000I mean, we've been in a number of relatively hot zones.
00:46:43.000I mean, we never did active conflict because we don't make that kind of show.
00:46:48.000But being in places like Gaza or the DRC or...
00:46:54.000I can count on one hand in many, many years of doing this the number of times that I actually felt threatened by someone.
00:47:04.000I've found that the most likely scenario is you're going to get accosted by a sandwich or someone trying to introduce you to their kids or take a selfie with you.
00:47:39.000Because if it's not dangerous, I mean, other than his show, what else are you seeing on CNN where they're in Africa where it's a good thing?
00:47:49.000What else are you seeing where people are in Egypt where it's a good thing?
00:47:53.000What else are you seeing where people are interacting with people on the street and there's not some sort of a murder story or a rape story or something awful?
00:48:02.000Yeah, I mean, I think you're starting to see it a little bit, but mostly you're seeing it on CNN's Africa network.
00:48:14.000There you're starting to see them covering stories about entrepreneurs.
00:48:18.000You know, positive aspects, you know, building economies.
00:48:22.000But it's a real problem in our view of the world for people that don't travel.
00:48:25.000Well, listen, Africa just simply doesn't make news in the United States.
00:48:28.000I mean, it takes a genocide, you know.
00:48:32.000Well, all I've been hearing about Africa lately is what's going on with white farmers in South Africa.
00:48:37.000It's very scary stuff where people are encouraging people to attack white farmers.
00:48:45.000You know, and there's a whole lot of sociopolitical and economic shit that goes on with that that I'm not even going to pretend I understand.
00:50:29.000It's just like, yeah, but I think we started to learn that you could, like, really point the camera kind of anywhere.
00:50:34.000I think a big one for me was, like, doing this West Virginia show last year, which is a place that had always been, like, really close to my heart.
00:50:42.000Like, I grew up there when I was a kid.
00:51:11.000Like, will Tony respond to this when we make a show here?
00:51:14.000And within two days, he was like, big, you know, very deeply heartfelt statements about the place, really loved it, you know, and it was kind of another aha moment where you're like, oh, yeah, of course.
00:51:29.000The human story is everywhere, and you can dig into it wherever you go.
00:51:34.000The fundamentals of that don't change.
00:51:36.000And I think that, you know, what he did was so cleanly and clearly and so free of bullshit cut to the core of those very fundamental kind of human stories, you know?
00:52:34.000Say if you were going to go to Puerto Rico or something like that, how would you make the decisions?
00:52:39.000How would you decide where to go and why?
00:52:42.000I'll take you through the whole process.
00:52:44.000So Tony would come up with a list of places that he was interested in going, and maybe we would throw a couple in, like I mentioned the West Virginia show, you know.
00:53:36.000What are the stories that have been told about this place?
00:53:38.000And how can we look at it from a different angle?
00:53:41.000So like the Nigeria one, we kind of focused in on, like I said, you know, Grassroots capitalism, DIY entrepreneurship, you know, street level, you know, the street level kind of dynamics of the economy, you know.
00:53:57.000And that became, like, we could see ways to kind of make a beautiful, like, human story out of those elements.
00:54:23.000You know, and from that point, we'd just get heavy into research, write a treatment, you know, and break that story into like six acts, right?
00:54:35.000And then look for scenes to kind of fill and articulate that story.
00:54:40.000So scenes like, you know, I have this great economist, I know we're going to need an economist at some point, but we got to put, you know, economists are kind of boring by nature, so we got to put him somewhere more dynamic or there's this really interesting story.
00:54:53.000Computer market that has a lot of energy.
00:56:55.000Again, it's two guys standing there with cameras that have been traveling, at least from Tony's perspective, been traveling with Tony for a long time.
00:57:04.000It's just like having two more friends at the meal.
00:57:07.000In terms of with the sidekicks, I think we learned early on that you've got to go up, you've got to introduce yourself, you've got to smile, you've got to laugh, you've got to be able to be self-deprecating, make them feel comfortable, like you're there to ask them questions, not to tell them who they are.
00:57:33.000So we must have been doing something right.
00:57:35.000Was there ever a time you were in a restaurant and people were pissed off that there was people standing there with cameras filming a table?
00:57:56.000You had a view of the world by doing that show and traveling the way you did that is less than 1% of the population is ever going to experience.
00:58:34.000They'd be like, oh, well, you've been all these places.
00:58:37.000Yeah, but the world doesn't work like that.
00:58:40.000It's not like the more places you go, the smaller the world feels.
00:58:44.000The more places you go, the bigger the world feels.
00:58:46.000It just feels bigger and bigger and bigger because you realize there's this country, there's this county in this country, there's this town in this county, there's this street, there's all these other streets, there's all these other people.
00:59:45.000I watched a few of them the other night.
00:59:48.000The first time I watched it, In a while, I posted a thing on Instagram too about it because I was real reluctant to watch it after he died, but then I went on a bender.
01:00:00.000I watched like, I binged, watched like three of them in a night.
01:00:04.000I was like, God damn, what a good show it was.
01:01:05.000When you would give him a rough cut, say, like I said, a show on Puerto Rico or what have you, so he would take that, he would watch it, and then he would start writing?
01:02:50.000And when they, you know, when they weren't working, he was pissed, you know, and great.
01:02:56.000You know, I think the biggest thing that I miss in this process of cutting this Texas show that I'm doing now is not having the pressure of him looking at it and being like, dude, you know, no, man, this ain't working.
01:03:11.000You know, that was a real benefit to us.
01:03:19.000You know, it's the weirdest thing, man.
01:03:21.000I didn't really know he was smoking again, and then the Puglia show came out, and I just saw him light up on camera.
01:03:29.000You know, I was like, oh shit, I guess we're doing this again.
01:03:32.000And then a couple of my shows at the end, he'd start just lighting up on camera, and that was always no-go territory.
01:03:42.000In the past, when he was smoking, we would stop shooting, you know?
01:03:49.000All of a sudden he was just lighting up right on camera and I don't know it shocked the shit out of me you know I kind of looked around the crew like what do we do like I was shocked because he said that when his daughter was born is when he decided to stop smoking because he realized that you know he had something else to live for and that he you know he didn't want to be on some cancer bed yeah fucking iron lung having his daughter visit him yeah so he quit yeah It
01:05:35.000Um, you know, Tony, I think, gave us, like, tremendous tools to, you know, for how we look at the world and, like, how we will continue to go on looking at the world.
01:05:48.000And, um, I don't know exactly what show I'll do, but I know it will continue that kind of ethos, you know?
01:05:57.000And, um, I get, you know, I feel like I have this very powerful kind of, um, I don't know, like I said, a set of tools now that he kind of handed us to go on and keep doing,
01:06:18.000Isn't the problem with this work that you need someone like him?
01:06:23.000You kind of need either a Rinella, who's a very unique person, and in many ways similar.
01:06:30.000Not self-destructive at all, but really meticulous about his work, and a very good writer as well, and his narration.
01:06:40.000One of the things that separates Meat Eater from any other show is that Steve has this eloquent narration that goes through it, and it makes you realize our perception of what it means to be a hunter Is based on stereotypes, negative stereotypes.
01:06:57.000This is a really well-read, brilliant man who has a great passion for the outdoors and for public lands and for wildlife and for consuming wildlife and this adventure of pursuing it and eating it and cooking it and showing you the art of cooking it.
01:07:18.000You know, you wouldn't be able to make Meat Eater with Pig Man.
01:07:26.000Dude, I can't even talk about Pig Man.
01:08:43.000You know, a really poignant episode on that show for me was when we went up to Alaska and we're hunting black bear and he decided not to take a shot.
01:08:54.000You know, I mean, here's a guy that loves animals as much as he loves hunting animals, as much as he loves conservation of animals, as much as he loves the knowledge and the science behind animals in the natural world, you know.
01:10:59.000And they're thinking, we're going to see Steve shoot this, then we're going to see him cook up a bear roast, and we're going to see stewed carrots and onions and potatoes, and this is going to be amazing.
01:11:09.000And he's going, no, I don't want to do it.
01:11:44.000Can you put out a show where there's a perfectly legitimate shot at, again, I mean a very high percentage shot at exactly the animal we're going after and the choice to not take the shot?
01:11:57.000You know, how are people going to respond?
01:12:00.000Overwhelmingly, people were like, hey man, I know exactly how you feel.
01:12:26.000You know, I think that it was like this moment where like, oh my god, like all these, you know, this industry has like missed a big, big part of who the people, you know, that are paying attention here are, you know.
01:12:41.000You don't have to just go like sell arrowheads, you know, and, you know, cackle hanging out of a helicopter.
01:13:31.000But he, you know, Steve, he sort of changed the perception of hunting for a lot of people that have become fans of his show the same way that Tony sort of changed the perceptions of food and of cooking.
01:13:50.000I mean, I'm not like Terrence Malick or something, but I got a lot to offer and I got a career.
01:13:56.000I'm not going to dedicate my career to these people unless I really, really believe in what they're doing.
01:14:02.000And those are two cases of people that I like.
01:14:07.000Really believe in, man, because they were willing to look at an industry or look at something that they loved and say, like, well, I have a completely different take on it, you know, and I'm willing to put that out there at whatever cost.
01:14:20.000And in both cases at work, because they're both super smart, you know, really capable people, you know.
01:14:28.000I don't think I've ever met really anyone more capable than Steve in a lot of ways.
01:15:04.000Yeah, which is just, if anybody doesn't know, there's a two-part series on the Meat Eater podcast about a Fognac, which is an island in Alaska where they have enormous brown bears and they got charged and attacked by a fucking 11-foot bear.
01:16:24.000It wasn't like we need to go out, we need the perfect kill shot, we need to set this up, we need to set that up.
01:16:29.000It was kind of like, well, we're just going to go out and we're going to see what happens.
01:16:33.000We're going to kind of grit our teeth and bear it no matter what, you know, where the journey takes us and we're just going to document that.
01:16:43.000That was like super exciting television to make at that time too.
01:16:47.000I've done five episodes of this show and we struck out on two of them.
01:18:12.000It was also, like, I think, you know, one of the things I like so much about that episode, too, is it feels so much like the process of hunting.
01:19:13.000It feels like there's more of what they call premium content now on TV. There's more people looking for things that have more substance to it.
01:19:32.000I'm not in development, so I'm not really in a place to say, but I get the feeling that outlets like Netflix have really shaken up the paradigm.
01:19:46.000I think the internet in general has changed people's expectations.
01:19:49.000And uncensored content is so prevalent and so much more attractive.
01:19:56.000It's just changed the way people absorb things.
01:20:10.000Not all of those swings have hit, but they've been pretty brave in terms of, like, how much and what a wide range of content they've been willing to take on.
01:20:22.000And so, you know, again, maybe that's, you know, part of what's driving it.
01:20:27.000I know I've been lucky enough to land at, like I said before, like 0.0 with Chris and Lydia there and their ethos of, you know, making content that like has a purpose, you know, that works towards bettering,
01:20:43.000you know, the world or showing people something about the world or...
01:22:25.000And it was, man, again, it was great to be able to do that and, like, have that freedom.
01:22:30.000And I think CNN in a lot of ways, like, you know, and Tony, that, you know, to have the freedom to be like, well, here's a, you know, 60-year-old, you know, ex-heroin addict.
01:22:41.000We're going to do whatever he wants to do, you know?
01:22:44.000We're going to go wherever in the world he wants to go, and we're just going to kind of let him talk, you know?
01:22:50.000Well, the Seattle one, I mean, they let him get blasted.
01:22:54.000I mean, he was smoking weed on camera, smoking weed through the show, visiting growers, and then going to restaurants high as fuck.
01:23:02.000Like, you could tell he was high, and he was talking about how he'd been smoking all day.
01:23:07.000He's on camera talking about being baked with two people who are growers, the brother and sister who are hilarious.
01:24:59.000I'll tell you what's funny, the controversial part of that episode was not Tony smoking, because that's legal and it's perfectly, you know, it's fine for him to smoke.
01:25:07.000It was when he handed the joint to me over the camera.
01:25:11.000That one was a little, I think that was a little tough for some folks to swallow.
01:28:17.000They were saying it's not a hunting show.
01:28:19.000Yeah, I think that there's, you know, I don't remember who that was.
01:28:23.000But I think that they're very leery of this idea of like a hunting show and what a hunting show was.
01:28:29.000Well, meanwhile, those subsistence shows that they have, they're all hunting and gathering.
01:28:34.000I mean, that is like one of the more popular shows on all of these cable channels where these people that live in Alaska and they're trapping.
01:28:47.000And I think there's something very different, you know, when you take like, you know, when you take like, I don't know, for some reason, when you take Steve, like New York City intellectual, and you put him in that environment, I think there was a different reaction than like, oh, these people live in Alaska.
01:29:02.000It's like watching pygmies hunt, you know?
01:29:04.000These are, this is the natural environment of, you know, and that's what they do.
01:29:09.000And so hunting is acceptable under those conditions, you know?
01:29:12.000It's like, why isn't it acceptable for someone who, like, lives it as, like, a base philosophy in their life, give them a chance to explain why, you know?
01:29:44.000Yeah, at his restaurant, and they shot a deer, and Marco put the blood on Tony's head, which is what you're supposed to do when you get your first kill.
01:30:15.000And, um, I think that he, I think he, I think the story goes that he like, he goes, they asked him to kill the pig and he goes up and like, just very, very coldly double taps the pig in the head.
01:30:30.000And I think that he says there's just this moment of silence amongst the crowd.
01:31:52.000That was like a very clear kind of aspect of it.
01:31:56.000You know, I was like, well, I'm taking responsibility now, not only for like this animal's life, but for this animal's pain and suffering and the consequences of my actions, you know?
01:32:07.000So I'm not going to be lobbing off any 750-yard, you know, rifle shots because I'm not qualified to do that.
01:32:15.000And it's irresponsible to the animal and the potential suffering that you can cause, you know, or losing the animal or, you know.
01:32:36.000Yeah, I mean, it became really clear with me, just knowing him, that this guy's got a very powerful moral compass and core set of beliefs that are just non-negotiable.
01:35:09.000And for Tony, that was always a completely unacceptable way to make TV. So he had no idea it was going to happen before it started happening?
01:35:52.000It's a great scene, largely because Sally Freeman, the producer of that, is absolutely brilliant and one of the best directors that's ever come through that show.
01:37:00.000It's like shitty acting with people that are not trained, and they're edited with people talking in front of the camera like, I didn't know what Mo was thinking.
01:38:15.000And that line is a morally and ethically established line by Tony and by the crew that says, like, there's a place at which it becomes unfair.
01:38:26.000The manipulation of reality becomes a manipulation that has now become unfair to the people who are viewing this, the people who are there.
01:39:12.000I mean, you know, we talk about in, like, the film industry today how rare it is to have true auteur final cut directors, you know.
01:39:19.000There's only a handful of them, you know, largely the studios have taken over that control.
01:39:25.000Well, equally in the television industry, it's that rare to have people that have the kind of power and control to have the luxury of saying, you know, hey, listen, I have guidelines here, and we're not going to cross them, you know, and then have people,
01:39:40.000you know, be like, great, go, go, go make it, you know, and we were able to do that, you know.
01:39:47.000It seems like Netflix would be a really good place for something like that.
01:39:50.000Yeah, it seems like Netflix would be a really good place for a lot of things.
01:41:20.000How many episodes have you guys done that haven't aired yet?
01:41:23.000Well, I think we'll have seven in this next season.
01:41:29.000That's the only one of those seven that was actually completed with Tony's narration.
01:41:37.000The rest of them are incomplete in that respect.
01:41:42.000Again, we've been kind of fighting through editing those over the last few months and trying to figure out ways to You know, to do this without completely gutting, you know, the method of making this show.
01:41:59.000And then there's a couple specials in there, like, you know, talking to the crew and stuff like that, you know.
01:42:05.000So it's going to be a pretty profound season.
01:42:12.000So, once you're done with that, you just start looking at new projects and different things to do?
01:42:17.000I have a couple, like, assignments already.
01:42:20.000Some projects I'm, like, pretty excited about, you know.
01:42:23.000I just don't know that they've officially been announced yet, so, you know.
01:42:28.000But there's good stuff out there, and there's, you know, one nice thing in all of this incredibly difficult time is a lot of people have come to us and said, like, listen, we always believed in what you guys did,
01:42:44.000and we'd like you to continue doing it, and here's a project we have that we think, you know, so hopefully we can continue to make things with the same kind of, you know, it looks like we can.
01:42:56.000Well, it seems like the success of the show and then the infectious enthusiasm that Tony had and that so many people who are fans of the show had for that style of television, it's just going to lead to more people taking more chances and doing things like that.