Remembering Anthony Bourdain

[heidih]

Two years after his death I found this article interesting and insightful  https://www.thedailybeast.com/remembering-anthony-bourdain-before-he-was-famous

[lindag]

16 minutes ago, heidih said:

Two years after his death I found this article a interesting and insightful  https://www.thedailybeast.com/remembering-anthony-bourdain-before-he-was-famous

Having recently finished two of Bourdain's books, I found this article somewhat helpful in understanding the man a bit better.  

[Jon Savage]

I miss Bourdain's wit, insight & perspective very much.

Restos have only just started to reopen here in the past few days & 

I felt it especially important to eat out & tip 50% more than usual in Tony's

memory today.

[Eatmywords]

Anderson interview's Bourdain's former assistant who's releasing a book they had begun.   

 

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/04/30/anthony-bourdain-remembered-laurie-woolever-acfc-full-episode-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/acfc-full-episodes/

 

[patti]

I took this photo of him at a hotel in Lafayette, LA, in Feb 2018, just a few months before his death. 
 

ETA: Thanks to liuzhou for improving the photo quality!

 

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by patti (log)

[Toliver]

"‘Roadrunner’ Trailer: Anthony Bourdain Doc Promises an Intimate, Unforgettable Trip"

 

 

The URL for the trailer for those who can't stream:  https://youtu.be/ihEEjwRlghQ

 

Focus Features will release “Roadrunner” in theaters on July 16.

 

[heidih]

I don't think i could watch it. Barely got through the trailer.

[gfweb]

6 hours ago, heidih said:

I don't think i could watch it. Barely got through the trailer.

Yup. Still can't watch the CNN stuff which is darker than the travel channel shows.

[paul o' vendange]

I honestly cannot accept the reality that he's gone.  It's just not something my brain has been able to construct as a "thing," don't know how to say it; same with my wife.  Only recently been able to watch anything with him in it - say, Top Chef - much less, any of his shows.  Always met with a whispered, "oh, Anthony," a sadness and a fervent wish some saving grace had gotten to him before it was too late.  

 

He shrank the world, and the hole is vast. 

[heidih]

36 minutes ago, paul o' vendange said:

He shrank the world, and the hole is vast. 

I get what you are saying but I see it more as he expanded people's world view. When the recent Israeli/Gaza crud started up my very first mental image and thoughts were his show in Beirut during the conflict in 2006. That show was extraordinary. ETA link https://www.travelchannel.com/videos/relive-beirut-with-tony-0194437

Edited June 4, 2021 by heidih (log)

[paul o' vendange]

13 minutes ago, heidih said:

I get what you are saying but I see it more as he expanded people's world view. When the recent Israeli/Gaza crud started up my very first mental image and thoughts were his show in Beirut during the conflict in 2006. That show was extraordinary. ETA link https://www.travelchannel.com/videos/relive-beirut-with-tony-0194437

 

Oh, yes, absolutely, totally agree.  And that was an incredible show.  I know it changed him in a pretty fundamental way, too.  Sure as hell rocked our world - the literal cacophony of a typical Bourdain outing on great food and people much like us (the "shrinking world"), smashing in a moment straight up against the sudden, surreal storm of war, all through the conduit of his show.  Those confused first minutes, seems universal to our species, when something like death stares back at us blankly for the first time, and we stand dumbly with melting smiles, waiting for our brains to catch up.  He broke easy worldviews, a congenital iconoclast, but even this could change a guy like him.

 

Maybe I'm just fondly remembering him sitting on the ground with a Vietnamese family, drinking their homemade hooch and eating their food, as family himself, among the reeds.  Now that he's gone, that's the stuff that sticks with me most.  How much distance and enmity we have, when we're so ridiculously small.

[weinoo]

I'll watch it gladly, just like I'll still watch a Robin Williams' movie or stand-up bit, just like I'll still watch a Philip Seymour Hoffman movie, listen to a Nirvana or Joy Division song, and on and on.

 

I mean, if his best friend (with whom he evidently couldn't confide in and was with him) can discuss AB and fondly remember him, I think I can manage. (I do miss Les Halles for sure, and it was quite the place way back when).

 

And of course, I'll fondly treasure this...

 

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by weinoo (log)

[AAQuesada]

Maybe I'll go see it when it's raining, so I can say that's why my face is wet. lol

[heidih]

WCK (Jose Andres) just posted a quote from him "food may not solve the world's problems but its a start"

[heidih]

Not sure what to think about the AI Bourdain voice in the movie. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/16/anthony-bourdain-documentary-ai-voiceover-roadrunner

[gfweb]

2 hours ago, heidih said:

Not sure what to think about the AI Bourdain voice in the movie. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/16/anthony-bourdain-documentary-ai-voiceover-roadrunner

Yeah. Its a sour note. The AI voice makes stuff appear to be a quote that isn't one.  But the controversy is a great promotional technique.

 

The director sort of shoves the ethical lapse to the side when asked. Ain't no thing says he.

 

Not so sure, myself

[paul o' vendange]

I am sick to my stomach.

[blue_dolphin]

4 hours ago, heidih said:

Not sure what to think about the AI Bourdain voice in the movie. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/16/anthony-bourdain-documentary-ai-voiceover-roadrunner

I don’t like it. The tone of a voice conveys more than the words of an email and Bourdain's voice was iconic. Using AI to reconstruct a poor quality voice recording is fine if it's transparent. Likewise, using a voice-over narrator to read a character’s writing is fine as viewers understand it’s a reconstruction. But using AI to make a deceased author speak sentences they wrote but never spoke and not making that clear is inappropriate. Disappointed. 

[weinoo]

Helen Rosner weighs in...The Ethics of a Deepfake Anthony Bourdain Voice

 

Quote

To craft the film’s narrative, Neville drew on tens of thousands of hours of video footage and audio archives—and, for three particular lines heard in the film, Neville commissioned a software company to make an A.I.-generated version of Bourdain’s voice. News of the synthetic audio, which Neville discussed this past week in interviews with me and with Brett Martin, at GQ, provoked a striking degree of anger and unease among Bourdain’s fans. “Well, this is ghoulish”; “This is awful”; “WTF?!” people said on Twitter, where the fake Bourdain voice became a trending topic. The critic Sean Burns, who had reviewed the documentary negatively, tweeted, “I feel like this tells you all you need to know about the ethics of the people behind this project.”

 

Quote

Setting aside questions of technological ethics, the artificial voice may trouble people in large part because of the close connection they feel with Bourdain—what psychologists call a parasocial relationship.

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by weinoo (log)

[Steve R.]

15 hours ago, gfweb said:

The director sort of shoves the ethical lapse to the side when asked. Ain't no thing says he.

Not so sure, myself

Its just one more line that we've crossed over, making it harder and harder to tell reality from, well, fakery.  Although the couple of AI clips in this "documentary" seems to be faithful to what Bourdain said in writing, the Director admits that we don't know how many other AI's are in there and, therefore, how accurately they reflect AB's voice.  And, straying from this particular piece, among the things that one can now do (with ease) to misrepresent reality are:

-call from Paris and claim to be home in NYC (by cell, zoom, what's app...)

-answer a door bell from afar and pretend to be home

-photoshop into pictures when not present 

-insert into videos when not there

-create AI visual "settings" (like the moon) and insert people, buildings, etc

-put a "voice" somewhere that the person didn't speak

-watch "reality" TV and believe its not as scripted as NCIS

 

And we wonder why so many folks cant discern what's real anymore and follow Ms. "Jewish Space Lasers" down the rabbit hole?

[weinoo]

34 minutes ago, Steve R. said:

watch "reality" TV and believe its not as scripted as NCIS

NCIS is scripted?!

 

Now you've ruined my Sunday!!

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, Steve R. said:

And we wonder why so many folks cant discern what's real anymore and follow Ms. "Jewish Space Lasers" down the rabbit hole?

Deception is as old as humankind. It may seem more sophisticated now but just how sophisticated did that Trojan horse seem to be in its time?

I don’t think the answer is handwringing or pearl clutching but better education especially that concerned with interpreting media in all its forms. 

[paul o' vendange]

To me it's disgraceful because it's the antithesis of everything Anthony very likely felt, to the extent any of us could know him (virtually not at all, I know).  What a person writes, and what they say, are two different things; and that's when it's the person him- or herself freely doing it.

 

Nothing about this feels right to me.  It feels like gross exploitation.  Whose story is being told?

[Alex]

On 7/17/2021 at 7:35 PM, heidih said:

Not sure what to think about the AI Bourdain voice in the movie. https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/16/anthony-bourdain-documentary-ai-voiceover-roadrunner

 

The Onion is on it, of course.

 

Quote

“I kept asking myself throughout the film, ‘How did they get these intimate conversations between Bourdain and a chipper sentient pastrami on rye?’

 

[lindag]

I’ve been streaming “Parts Unknown” the last few days.  today was Quebec and Montreal; it was wonderful.  Now I want to visit Montreal.