Morgan Neville is the Oscar-winning documentarian behind 20 Feet from Stardom, which took a closer look at backup singers, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, about children’s entertainer Mister Rogers. For his next film, he’s exploring another icon: Anthony Bourdain, the chef-turned-author-turned-provocative travel and food show host who died in 2018 at the age of 51.
Named after a song by the Modern Lovers (“Roadrunner, roadrunner / Going faster miles an hour” could have been Bourdain’s motto in life), Roadrunner includes never-before-seen footage of the No Reservations host and interviews from fellow celebrity chefs, including David Chang and Éric Ripert. “One minute I was standing in front of a deep fryer,” Bourdain says in the trailer above, “the next I was watching the sun set in the Sahara.”
Here’s the official plot summary:
It’s not where you go. It’s what you leave behind… Chef, writer, adventurer, provocateur: Anthony Bourdain lived his life unabashedly. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), this unflinching look at Bourdain reverberates with his presence, in his own voice and in the way he indelibly impacted the world around him.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain opens on July 16.
