The director of 'Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain' talks about mental health and suicide

Morgan Neville, director of Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain reflects on Bourdain's life, suicide and the challenges of talking about mental health.

Video Transcript

- You're probably going to find out about it anyway. So here's a little preemptive truth telling. There's no happy ending.

ETHAN ALTER: I think a lot of people when they come into your movie and think about Anthony Bourdain, the big question they'll have is why. And I wondered how you wanted to approach that in your film.

MORGAN NEVILLE: Well, I feel like it's less about why exactly he committed suicide and more about how could the guy we thought we knew, the kind of funny, smart guy who we had a relationship with as the public, how do you reconcile that with somebody who would commit suicide?

Understanding the connections and kind of building a bridge where the kinds of things that I was looking for so that you can understand maybe not exactly why but certainly how that could happen.

ETHAN ALTER: Well, one of the things that he acknowledged in his life was that he was an addict. He was addicted to heroin, among other substances, for a long time. But I think what your film gets at is that he sort of transferred that addiction later on to other things. And that's something that maybe people didn't recognize, that he had an addictive personality beyond what he admitted to.

MORGAN NEVILLE: 100%. I mean, yes, there are bad addictions. And again, "Kitchen Confidential" talks about heroin and cocaine addiction. And workaholism is kind of the last socially acceptable form of addiction. And so he absolutely transferred his addictive tendencies and kind of an OCD-ness that he had first into the kitchen.

And I think part of why the kitchen life worked for him so well is just the rigor of it, the hours. There's not a lot of wiggle room if you're not on the straight and narrow. And then his show he ran kind of in the same way of kind of relentlessly traveling and producing and working. And even when he wasn't shooting the show, he was doing book tours and lecture tours. And I mean, just, it was incredible kind of how much work he put in front of himself at all times.

ETHAN ALTER: Continuing along the lines of addiction, I mean, I think it's interesting that sometimes there can be a lack of sympathy for people, especially who are wealthy and famous and on TV, like Anthony was among people, they sort of again go back to that question of why. Why are you depressed? Why do you feel these addictions? How do you hope that people who maybe struggle with that aspect of it respond to the film and see and find sympathy for Anthony?

MORGAN NEVILLE: I mean, I have tremendous sympathy for him. And I think to say, oh, just because somebody has success, that that means they should be happy. And again, what is success? Part of Tony's success was being famous. And Tony never really wanted to be famous and in fact became agoraphobic later in life. He was always kind of a shy person, which people don't really know.

But I think just the being Tony Bourdain out in the world was a tremendous responsibility. It's not like seeing a giant movie star. When you would see Bourdain on the street, everybody would have to come up to him. And everybody would want to buy him a beer or ask him about a restaurant. And he obliged them all. He felt like it was his duty that he was working for the public in that way.

ETHAN ALTER: Something that comes up at the end of the movie, certainly the anger that his friends feel about him leaving them. And I think that was a really interesting note to end on. And it does seem like we tend to romanticize sometimes celebrities who end their lives. And the way you and the film sort of answers that directly. I wonder what you thought about that. I wanted to end on that note.

MORGAN NEVILLE: Well, Tony himself was actually kind of a suicide-ologist, that he was somebody who always knew who had committed suicide and how and had kind of a dark fascination with it. And I think there can be this kind of romantic idea about it or this live fast, die young kind of rock-and-roll attitude about things.

And I just wanted to show that that's utter BS, that there's nothing romantic about it. I mean, I know because I spent time kind of swimming in the sea of grief that he left behind. That part of it is brutal. And there's no way around it. And I think in that way, it wasn't what I thought about when I first thought about making a film. But it's something that became really important is understanding just how damaging suicide is because it leaves people with these complicated emotions of shame or sadness that they could have done something, and they can't talk about it.

And even if, intellectually, people know that it's not their fault, emotionally it's a whole other matter. So that was something that I just wanted people to feel in the film because I felt it making the film.

ETHAN ALTER: Are there signs you hope people look for in their own lives if they know someone wrestling with depression or addiction that you hope that they can use this as a teaching example of how to approach them?

MORGAN NEVILLE: It's such a complicated matter. But I think at the very least, this should maybe open the door and permission to talk about it. And it's interesting. Even as I've been screening the film-- just for a few weeks, I've started screening the film. And I've had many people come up to me and talk about suicide in their own lives with people they knew. And in that way, I feel like the film gives us permission to talk about something which is one of the more unmentionable things in our society. So if that's what it can do, that's great. Anything more I'd be thrilled with.

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