Even before he took his own life in June 2018, Anthony Bourdain had a particular fascination with celebrity suicides. “Tony was kind of a suicidologist,” says Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville, whose latest feature, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the eventful life and sudden death of the world-famous chef and TV host “He was somebody who always knew who had committed suicide and how, and had this kind of dark fascination with it.” (Watch our video interview above.)
Bourdain wasn’t unique in that regard: there’s an entire subculture that’s drawn to stories of celebrity suicide. And the New York-born chef, who was 62 when he died, has become a focal point in that community in the years since his death, joining such gone-too-soon artists as Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain, both of whom are still immortalized on murals or internet tributes. But Roadrunner, which opens in theaters on July 16, pointedly rejects that kind of gauzy iconography, instead focusing on the anger of the loved ones that Bourdain left behind. In fact, the film ends with one of the chef’s friends — artist David Choe — defacing a spay-painted Bourdain mural in a defiant rejection of what Neville calls the “romantic idea” of celebrity suicide.
