Tom Vitale

There are a lot of moments when I felt uncomfortable reading this memoir of a life in television, as while you'll learn a great deal of what it took to make Tony Bourdain's TV shows, it's also quite self-lacerating on the part of Vitale. His goal is to purge himself of grief and emotional baggage, and get on with his life, as, to be honest, living a twenty-year adventure can just become a good way to avoid dealing with one's own emotional issues; the better not to wind up like his boss and show more friend. As for whether Bourdain could have been helped with a timely intervention, who knows? Vitale does believe that there were some signs ahead of time that a crisis point was fast approaching, but they were easy to miss in the whirl of making television. I would also note that the more you're familiar with the shows Bourdain and his "pirate crew" made over the years, the more you will get out of this book. show less

A fairly honest, warts-and-all account of what it was like to spend the best part of two decades travelling and working with Anthony Bourdain, the food/travel writer and TV whose who died by suicide in 2018. Tom Vitale was the producer/director who worked with Bourdain, who found himself almost perpetually oscillating between thinking that Bourdain was his friend and that Bourdain hated him, between finding Bourdain a compelling and charismatic personality capable of real insight and... show more well, to be frank, a narcissistic asshole. Vitale clearly wrote this as much to work through his complicated emotions towards and grief for Bourdain (though I hope that if I were ever in a situation where my boss throttled me, I'd have the self-respect to just walk) as he did to document the making of No Reservations et al. I sincerely hope that the writing process helped him, and found this a compelling if sometimes uncomfortable read, but I also found myself thinking that with the benefit of a few more years and some therapy he might be able to produce an even stronger book than this. show less

Tom Vitale's book sharing his experiences traveling and making TV with Anthony Bourdain's is quite a read. There's a lot to unpack and it goes to show you that people and experiences are complicated. Also, that two things can be true at once...Tony Bourdain could be a hero and a horrific boss, a magnetic personality and hard to be around. It's fascinating to read about all of the different situations the experienced and things they went through just to produce one hour of tv at a time. I show more think that's what made the show so compelling, it certainly wasn't 'fake' or 'put on'. I took a break a few times throughout the book, since Tom was so candid about how tough it was on the road and how stressful it was to work through problem solving on location sometimes. It sounds like an amazing job, but I don't know if I would have made it longer than making one of these episodes without needing therapy and a week long nap. 3.75 stars rounded up to 4.

*(I'm glad I read this and I agreed with another review that said it was an excellent companion to the Bourdain Oral History. I'm glad I read that one first, because it gave me a lot of background on Anthony Bourdain's life and childhood.)* show less

Mostly a series of sketches about ever increasingly dodgy and then outright dangerous places where Anthony and Tom went to film the food programs. However, a lot of the book is about what Bourdain was like and his relationship with the crew and with Tom. He comes across as mercurial and very much the alpha dog in the group, but towards the end, gentler and more aware that he needs these intimate friends he has worked with for 17 years. A good chunk of the book is about Tom and the others show more trying to come to terms with Bourdain’s suicide, very sad. show less