The Anthony Bourdain film you should watch before the new A24 biopic

Biopics are a tricky proposition. On one hand, telling the story of a famous person means having a built-in audience and pre-release interest. On the other hand, fans who know the life of said person will be extra critical of inaccuracies, or creative decisions they disaprove of.

Anthony Bourdain is one of the most respected and admired celebrities of the last 50 years. A24 has announced plans to make a narrative about his life, titled Tony. Fans are, understandably, split. A good film about Bourdain would be an awards darling, but a bad one would suffer the ire of the internet.

Roadrunner is currently streaming on Max

The film is still being scripted, so it's going to be a long time until we get to see Tony. Fortunately, there's a wonderful film about Bourdain that's available to watch right now. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is currently streaming on Max, and it manages the rare feat of capturing every side of the often mercurial celebrity.

Roadrunner takes a standard documentary approach, mixing in interviews and archival footage of the chef with more recent interviews involving his friends and loved ones. The film does an exemplary job of juxtaposing Bourdain's personal and professional lives, and the ways in which they informed one another.

Morgan Neville is no slouch in the storytelling department. The director's 2018 release, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, became the highest grossing documentary of all time. He's also made acclaimed docs about the lives of background singers (20 Feet from Stardom) and the production of Orson Welles' final film (They'll Love Me When I'm Dead).

Roadrunner was controversial due to its AI usage

Neville's deft handling of Bourdain's life manages to be as unflinching as the man himself. There's a candor to the way Roadrunner presents the chef's struggles with depression, and his eventual death via suicide. The film also manages to span the entirety of Bourdain's life without slipping into the stale, Wikipedia page format that so many lesser releases do.

The one knock against Roadrunner, and something that garnered controversy at the time, was the use of AI to recreate Anthony Bourdain's voice. Neville opted to use the technology to reproduce the chef's cadence in instances in which the real audio had been lost and/or damaged.

It's not ideal, but it doesn't feel exploitative or emotionally dishonest. We're excited to see what Tony will bring to the table as a narrative, but even if it falls short, fans have a great Bourdain film in the form of Roadrunner.