If you can’t attend this Sunday’s screening and panel discussion for Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain at the Terrace Theater, Focus Features, the documentary’s distribution company, is offering Holy City Sinner readers the exclusive chance to attend a virtual screening on Thursday, July 15 at 7 pm!
Focus Features says Roadrunner provides “a gripping portrait of the inimitable Anthony Bourdain, Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville's new documentary Roadrunner traces the unlikely life and career of the chef turned bestselling author and global television star through the eyes of the people who knew him best.”
To attend the free virtual screening, just RSVP here!
The film’s synopsis and trailer can be seen below.
Synopsis
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.
Roadrunner is written and directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won't You Be My Neighbor?). The producer is Caitrin Rogers (20 Feet From Stardom, Miss Americana). Co-producer is Victoria Marquette. Editors are Aaron Wickenden and Eileen Meyer. Directors of photography are Adam Beckman, Shana Hagan, Tom Krueger, Erich Roland, Nathan Salter and Graham Willoughby. Consulting producers are Kimberly Witherspoon, Lydia Tenaglia and Christopher Collins (“Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour,” “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown”), and Laurie Woolever. Executive producers are Amy Entelis (“Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown”, RBG) and Courtney Sexton (RBG, Three Identical Strangers) for CNN Films, and Lizzie Fox (“Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown”) for HBO Max.
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