Chapter 1: What was Anthony Bourdain's early life like and how did it shape him?
This is exactly right.
Double Elvis.
Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out.
There was a large chunk of my 20s that I was just so wanting to be out of that phase, out of my skin, and I just really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia Clark.
When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?
That you'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. David Oyelowo.
I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.
Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Mongeau, Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 2: How did Anthony Bourdain's addiction influence his career?
So I just had to cover him for Disgraceland. Anthony's life was fascinating, his late in life success, his struggles with heroin, and his death was tragic and complicated. All of that. makes for incredible storytelling. Now, this is more of a tribute than it is an expose, but it's all very much Disgraceland.
So if you're like me and you're starved for more Bourdain content, I think you're going to dig this episode. Consider it an amuse-bouge, a tease of the palette before the Bourdain biopic is released later this year. All right, Discos, I hope you dig it. Here's my story on the late, great Anthony Bourdain.
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.
The stories about Anthony Bourdain are insane. As a struggling cook and writer, he chased the romance of a heroin addiction through the restaurant kitchens and grimy rock clubs of 1980s Manhattan. He published his first book of nonfiction at the age of 43 and became an overnight success.
He parlayed success as a writer into success as a TV host, traveling all over the world, dining with rock stars, presidents, and everyone in between. He dodged bullets, the real and figurative kind, the figurative kind from the tabloids having the most impact. And through it all, Anthony Bourdain made great art. Nothing like that cheesy loop I played for you at the top of the show.
That was not great art. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called High Stakes Stakeout MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Maria Maria by Santana featuring the product GMB. And why would I play you that specific slice of nylon-stringed Spanish Harlem cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on May 22nd, 2000.
And that was the day Anthony Bourdain published Kitchen Confidential, forever changing his life and enriching ours. On this episode, chasing heroin through lower Manhattan, an overnight success, beers with the president, an insatiable lust for life in Anthony Bourdain. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Chapter One, The Not-So-Blushing Bride
Provincetown, Massachusetts, the edge of the world. Some might say the beginning of my world. At least that's what they'll say when I'm dead.
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Chapter 3: What led to Anthony Bourdain's overnight success with 'Kitchen Confidential'?
When all the dust is settled, when the tabs have lost interest, and when the truly curious are still hanging around to pick through the remains of what once was, if not a perfect life, a damn interesting one. In P-town, as they call it, the point isn't to lose oneself on the edge of nowhere, but to find yourself, or perhaps to find who you might one day become. Wait a minute, hold up, hold up.
This is not this. This is something else. This is this. Bobby was giving it to the bride from behind like a drunken pirate. She panted in delight. She was bent over a 55-gallon drum of cooking grease. And Bobby's apron was pulled up over his belly. His pants were down around his ankles. Her white wedding gown somehow still looked pure under the Provincetown moonlight.
Myself and the other dishwasher and the cooks howled at the moon from the back door of the kitchen, egging on Bobby, our head chef here at the Dreadnought. Inside the dining room at the bride's wedding reception, neither her assembled family nor her newlywed husband had any idea what was happening out back with the kitchen staff. That was Anthony Bourdain's secret weapon.
Most of the world had no idea what was happening out back with the kitchen staff. He used that secret knowledge to carve out a writing career unlike any other.
beginning with his debut work of nonfiction, Kitchen Confidential, published in 2000, which became an instant smash hit and transformed Anthony's life overnight, from capable chef in a good-not-great Manhattan restaurant to a New York Times bestseller and in-demand media darling.
Anecdotes like the aforementioned not-so-blushing bride, of course, an anecdote that Anthony Bourdain claims made him want to be a chef, had a lot to do with the book's success.
Anthony, or Tony as his friends called him, approached his subject, food, and the culture of chefs and the people who made kitchens run, like his hero Iggy Pop, godfather of punk, approached his own subject, rock and roll, with a potent mix of danger, truth, and charisma. At times, it seemed like danger was the point. Danger was where the action was. Gimme danger, little stranger.
Food, or making it, wasn't merely a job or a profession. It was, just like rock and roll, a lifestyle. And for guys like Tony Bourdain, the journeymen, the back-of-house pirates, the guys who steered ships of 20 or more staff, many of them alcoholics, drug addicts, ex-cons, immigrants, both legal and illegal, it was a romantic lifestyle.
Ask any writer and they'll tell you that romance can be a great tool for storytelling. That goes for works of non-fiction and for three-chord punk. Was Tony's story about the P-Town bride who was defiled on her wedding night true? Or was it just a way of romanticizing his backstory?
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Chapter 4: How did Bourdain transition from chef to television star?
Who cares? It was a great story. Was I Want to Be Your Dog true? Who cares? It's a great song. Truth isn't the point. Storytelling is the point. Creating is the point. And to create is to love, to bring love into the world, which Anthony Bourdain most certainly did with his writing. The love he inspired brought him unimaginable success.
Success that eventually led him to standing on a beach with his hero, Iggy Pop, in 2015, more than a decade after that story about the bride was published. Tony asks Iggy Pop what his definition of a perfect day is. And Iggy goes on to describe his perfect day.
It involves a beach, the big Florida sun sparkling on the ocean, and the positivity one can derive from such an experience, particularly when it's spent with a loved one. That's a far cry from what one would expect from a man who once proclaimed to the world that he was a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm. And Anthony Bourdain looks bewildered by his hero's answer.
Because Iggy Pop gave Anthony Bourdain the truth. And the truth is hard for a romantic to come to terms with. Throughout 20th century American culture, the concept of the junkie has been thoroughly romanticized. From Miles Davis to William S. Burroughs to Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain. For a certain type of subversive, leaning, literary-minded, rock-and-roll-bent transgressive,
Dudes who maybe paid a little too much attention to Lou Reed's lyrics, dudes who were always first in line to do whatever new drug showed up to the party last, who were always taking more, doing less, aspiring to little. To these dudes, heroin wasn't something to be avoided. Heroin, or junk, was something to aspire to. 1980.
Young Tony Bourdain didn't know who exactly he was looking for, but he knew what he wanted. He and a friend slowly cruised Second Avenue in a beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit. The Manhattan street was dark, near dead at this hour, and the two white boys were hunting for dope, or more specifically, hunting for a dope dealer. Actually, a dope dealership.
In those days, dealers didn't text you on a Friday to see if you were set for the weekend and then run the small baggie of brown up to your apartment via bike messenger.
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Chapter 5: What were the highlights of Bourdain's travel experiences?
No, in those days, in the bad old days, you had to swipe your sharpest, stealthiest knife from the kitchen, conceal it in an item of clothing that wouldn't result in you stabbing yourself, and head into the part of town that took no prisoners and produced only casualties. New York's Lower East Side, looking for a fix, just like Iggy Pop, just like Lou Reed, and just like Johnny Thunders.
And you weren't on the lookout for some pimp in a big straw hat standing on the corner either. You were looking for a hole in the wall the size of a Dodge Challenger, a hole in the wall that looked about as inviting as a den of hungry wolves, a hole in the wall that served up one thing, Heroin. Even cops didn't fuck with places like these. But you did. Because you were different.
You weren't like those other guys. Those pajama boys back at Vassar or the snobs back at CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. Upstate where you learned a lot but nothing as important as how to keep your knife sharp and your wit sharper. The snobs and the pajama boys had a lot in common.
For one, they were fucking Philistines, and they couldn't tell you the difference between George Orwell or Orville Redenbacher. And they had no fucking heart either. You had heart. The Vassar boys, your classmates at CIA, they'd never know the thrill of scoring in a seedy Lower East Side drug den like you did.
And they'd never know the complication of having to score heroin between staff meal and the first rush either. A necessary challenge your junkie ass now had to solve every night to keep from puking all over the entrees as they flew off the line.
Yet you figured it out, because it was the early 80s, and yeah, other than a new heroin habit and a shitty job you took an outsized amount of pride in, you had little. But you were Anthony fucking Bourdain. And the one thing you did have was a lust for life.
Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness.
So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back.
Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets. Meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levant, this went to a billion-dollar fraud.
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Chapter 6: How did Bourdain's relationships impact his life and career?
the largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told LaVon, you're ruining my life.
Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and your 20s, they can feel like a lot. On the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, we unpack the anxiety, the overthinking, the heartbreak, the identity crisis, all of it that comes with being in your 20s. Because if you've ever thought, is anybody else feeling this way? They definitely are.
I feel like my 20s was a process of checking off everything that I was not good at to get to what I was good at. Oftentimes we take everything a little bit too seriously and we get lost in things that we later on decide weren't even important to us to begin with.
There was a large chunk of my 20s that I was just so wanting to be out of that phase, out of my skin, and I just really regret not living in the present more. Each week, we break down the science behind what you're going through and give you real tools to navigate it. Your 20s aren't about having it all figured out. They're about understanding yourself just a little bit better.
Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Emilia Clarke.
When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?
Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up, and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bottle, and Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like... Making karate noises. And here's the entire, the Kardashian family over there. Everybody's going. And the air marshals trying to grab my arms and screaming.
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Chapter 7: What were the challenges Bourdain faced in his personal life?
So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Urban.
Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting.
I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?
No.
Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Mongeau, Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chapter two, Nancy with the laughing face. The heart of Manhattan beats from the working class. Bus drivers and busboys. Working stiffs and waitresses.
Bartenders pouring punch-out cold ones to stiff upper lips. Taxi drivers and doormen with more information than you need. Daily rag scribes and night watchmen. Cops, construction workers, dealers too. And if you're not careful, you'll get caught up in the grind and miss the beauty of the sweat and the hustle. Lose it all to the bustling sound of the lonesome streets.
Wake up in a midtown high-rise with a mortgage and a wife and a kid in a separate apartment. But if you keep your ears open, each night you'll hear the sound of the mission bell. That universal sign that it's time to blow off steam. Quitting time. And when you're too tired to think and too wired to go home, this is the time when you're reminded of your station in life.
Reminded of where you're supposed to be. Bellied up to the bar with the rest of your kind. Cursing your boss's greed and your customer's stupidity. Toasting your coworkers on a job well done.
Barely ready for a four-hour crash, an inevitable hangover, and unspoken gratitude for the fact that you get to get up too early, too sore, and too smart to know any better so that you, my friend, can go back to work and do it all over again. To an outsider, the kitchen during the nightly rush looked and sounded like chaos, but you've got it all under control.
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Chapter 8: What ultimately led to Anthony Bourdain's tragic end?
He may just be in the can with explosive diarrhea and no one will acknowledge that the phone has been ringing unanswered for what you swear to God has been all frigging night long and the owner just decided that right fucking now of all times is the time to pop in to bust your balls in front of his investors. Yes, that all may be happening at the moment and it might spell chaos.
for the uninitiated civilian looking in on your kitchen, but you're no civilian. You're a professional chef, or at least a very capable cook. And this is your kitchen.
Even if you don't own a piece, even if you're fighting a daily heroin, Jones, even if you're a functioning alcoholic, even if you haven't seen your new wife in the daylight in six weeks, and even if you can't speak Spanish, yet that's all that most of your employees speak, even if your fish guy went on the lam and your meat guy isn't returning your calls, none of this matters because you thrive in this chaos.
In fact, this isn't chaos at all. This, to you, for some unexplained reason, makes sense. It's organized. At least to you it is. You know your way around these challenges. You and you alone know how to solve these problems. But these are the only problems you know how to solve. Kitchen problems. outside the kitchen. That's chaos. You haven't paid your rent on time, well, ever.
You're perpetually three months behind and dodging your landlord. The creditors are after you and the taxman looms. You haven't been to a doctor for a preemptive checkup for what seems to be your entire adult life and you're barreling toward middle age with a needle hanging out of your arm during a time in history when intravenous drug use can spell instant death.
It's July, and your Christmas tree is still standing in the corner of your apartment, deader than Vince Giraldi and twice as pathetic as Charlie Brown. You and your wife, Nancy, are too ashamed to even bring it down to the corner for the trash man to pick up for fear of what your neighbors might think. You have next to no social life. You subsist on deli sandwiches and Simpsons reruns.
Life as you live it is barely any life at all. But work is where you thrive, and after work is when you come alive.
the sun ruled the sun king on the beach crashed out tanning away the heroin power asleep in the sand in the late morning hours before that it was the train out to rockaway nodding out having finished the last of your smack freaking out the civilians on their early morning rush hour commute Club 57, The Mud Club, CBGB, wherever junkie guitar players reign supreme on stage, you were there.
Past the line of pedestrians to the sympathetic doorman who'd been bribed with steak sandwiches from your kitchen. The kitchen you'd closed hours ago. You hit the bar after closing with a couple employees. Someone thought 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians was a good idea, and they were right. It blasted from the jukebox.
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