Tom Vitale - In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain

I DONT KNOW IF MY LIFE ENDED OR IF IT BEGAN WHEN I STARTED WORKING with Tony. Whatever the hell I did for a living was so vivid and spectacular, it all but consumed me. Then, without warning, it was over forever, reduced to nothing more than a memory.

In my case the old clich that life has a funny way of turning the tables when you least expect it rang uncomfortably true. Each two-week shoot contained a lifetimes worth of adventures, and thered been so many trips, Id lost count. Accustomed to the adrenaline rush of making split-second decisions with far-reaching consequences, I now found myself unemployed, with nowhere to go and poorly suited to handling simple everyday tasks. I still wrote 2006 on checks. I still wrote checks, for Christs sake. Even more disorienting, I went from the comfortable position of hiding behind the camera to struggling to articulate my own story.

And by struggling to articulate, what I really mean is that I found every excuse not to write this damn book. I grew a pandemic mustache. I consolidated, then organized, my extensive matchbook collection. I researched the nesting habits of a threatened species of birds that I didnt have the heart to evict from my chimney. I learned how to make mulberry jam. The one thing I didnt do was write.

Its not like I had a lack of stories to tell. In fact I had too many and spent almost all of my waking hours silently reliving them. Truth told, I was afraid I wasnt up to the challenge, worried Id get the story all wrong. When I eventually did the math and realized procrastinating would only lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, I stayed awake for days straight in an attempt to make up for lost time. In the process I inadvertently discovered the only way I could get anything down on paper was by replicating the extreme intensity and overstimulation of my old job. Like an unhinged detective determined to crack a case, I surrounded myself with souvenirs from my travels, scoured the four corners of my house for transcriptions, travel itineraries, even old receipts. I cross-referenced everything against shoot notebooks, logs, schedules, and emails. But none of it compared to my vast archive of unedited raw film footage. Much of my entire journey with Tony, my whole life really, had been recorded. It was a TV show, after all. I sat, curtains drawn, oblivious to the passing of time, obsessively watching my life play back on an endless loop.

Some memories were so powerful that I was convinced they should have yielded documentary evidence; but of course not everything was filmed, or preserved via email or text. What follows is my best attempt to paint an honest picture of my experience traveling with Tony, the highs and lows, and the bizarre as shit situations in which we constantly found ourselves. Its a story told by someone who is still trying to make sense of it all.

P.S. INCIDENTS INCLUDED IN THIS book are not intended to glamorize or endorse acts of cannibalism, drug use, smuggling, torture, extortion, bribery, wire fraud, attempted vehicular manslaughter, or the poaching of endangered species.