The Untold Truth of Anthony Bourdain with TV Producer Tom Vitale

that has to do with the fact that this book, your new book, came out last year. in the weeds is really insightful, but I'm more curious why the hell you didn't do it, why you didn't do it, why you're the only one without a confidentiality agreement, well you know we started making the show as a small group of people . and there were never any ndas and then sometime in the middle of CNN production we had a new production manager come in and I think she, I think, very intelligently and wisely realized, oh my gosh. there are no ndas. and all this initial paperwork.

I mean, it's a pretty normal thing that you would know happens when you start a new job, but almost everyone who's been working on the show has been working on it for a long time and so on. that wasn't really part of anything that existed and so they started this campaign to get everyone to sign the ndas. I don't know, I think at the time working in production this is maybe around 2016 or 17. Very close to At the end I was feeling quite paranoid and, I don't know, it was like, you know, working with Tony there was a team field and then the people in the office were different and then the network was something else and basically everyone was the enemy according to the way Tony organized things so I just refused to sign the paperwork and then they said they were going to stop giving me paychecks if I didn't sign the confidentiality agreement, so I thought that was pretty much the end of it.

And I mean, for a while, over the last few years, believe it or not, even though it was the best job in the world, I felt like I needed to escape from it, so I thought this would just be a way of letting the universe take I dealt with it but then they got into Tony's, fell out with a production company and suddenly had no relationship with the NDA and then completely backed out of asking for anything so it was just overlooked . tell me that, you know 16 17 18 because eventually the show continued until Tony's death and even after a while we had to complete some episodes to fulfill the contract, but we still finished in 20. uh, that must have been a great period challenging, but why continue doing something that was so difficult?

I feel exhausted, it was also the most amazing and wonderful thing, you know, no, no one, maybe there's one person in the entire history of all the different incarnations of the show who actually left voluntarily and that was for a pretty good job at the top Network just wasn't the kind of job you could or would leave and I think I also knew that even if I had really quit or something, Tony would probably have done something very magnanimous to try to bring me back, so there really wasn't a way out. Did you feel trapped and this is a bad thing or am I trying to understand why I heard you say that this time there was only one person left it was a very close team it was a very small team it must have been There was a tremendous amount of trust and rhythm built up, but it must There was something else that kept them all there.

I mean, Tony was an incredibly magnetic person. What was it about him? Well, life was never boring. Nothing with Tony was boring, even the boring thing in between moments and his little comment you could talk about on a front line in an airport somewhere, he could, you know, make fun of other passengers or a crew member or something he had happened and I mean it was just high comedy, it definitely always kept everyone going. very, very entertaining even if it could be, you know, some pretty dark humor at times, the humor, laughing was a big part of it.

I think even when things got really difficult or horrible, there was always a joke, I'm curious because I think for anyone who wants to become their own version of the next, meet Anthony Bourdain, the person who is in the spotlight, the person who has the great Vision, the person who is that magnetic Center. I think some of us realize there are a lot of things. Lots of people working behind the scenes to make things happen. I often think about, you know, the three Top Gear guys, people think you know Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, they're all really great guys and they're really great personalities, but when these teams travel they bring with them 120 people and they have huge budgets.

I'm not saying you guys were that big of a team, but there's just a lot of people working to make that person. shine in that moment and I think a lot of people listening right now want their own version of that, they want their team to help them, they want the confidence to be able to step forward, but Anthony was a pretty demanding person and I'm curious. one, what you learned working for someone with such high standards that is so demanding and what are the lessons that we or the things that we can emulate and what are the things that we probably shouldn't copy well Tonya says that everyone who is on television He's desperately afraid of not being on TV and I think that's incredibly true, working on TV is a fantastic thing if that's what you want, so the idea of ​​being kicked out of that bubble or not working on TV.

Television is very scary, esp. if you're on camera it's even worse and even though I think he definitely wanted to be on TV, he played like he didn't care and made all these kinds of very risky moves, like before he was really famous. I mean he was kind of famous, but Food Network wanted to change Cook's tour from an international travel show to a barbecue-centric series and instead of doing something he didn't want to do, Tony said go away and he went and forever. Intentions and purposes, you know, that could have been the end for him as far as television was concerned, but because he made risky moves and stayed true to himself, he decided that he would rather not be on television to do a show that I didn't want to make you.

I know it worked, it's a very risky kind of game because probably for most people who make that bet they would end up off television, so I don't know if it's a business model, but it worked for Tony and it's kind of the ethics that he instilled in all of us, you know, take that NDA as an example that you mentioned before any sane person would have signed the damn NDA. I mean, I didn't think he'd ever read a book like that. The fact that there was something I wanted to say, I just went to the office, was the main reason I didn't want to sign the NDA and you know, a lot of what we did was just what the network said we were.

They were going to do the opposite, whatever they wanted, we just had to do the opposite when we got to CNN, there was less of that because they just wanted the show that already existed, but I think a lot of what became the show was like a reaction to whatever the executives at Travel Channel wanted, so I don't know if that's good advice for anyone looking to build their career because we'll probably take you straight to living in a cardboard box. but that's more or less what we did and it worked. Do you think so? You see?

So he had this bold, rebellious spirit that people really admired um and I think I'm hearing that came through and even the way he operated the team and the TV show and everything else and he liked the office so there's a bold and rebellious spirit. Have you seen others try that and it just doesn't work because you're saying, hey, that's not professional advice and yet I'm not? I don't know, it seemed to have worked in this case, not only was it well blocked, it worked in this case, I think it's because you know Tony's product was really good and I think if it wasn't that good, along with the rest.

A lot of us would have been unceremoniously thrown around the curve a long time ago, you know, networks and production companies don't like to tolerate that kind of thing, I guess, unless it's absolutely necessary, which is part of the weirdness of the office dynamic because, uh, I know the show is very successful and doing well and Tony was happy, so it can't rock the boat too much. It worked. I haven't worked in many other places, but from what I understand from Tony and combined with common sense clearly. most people don't run their operations that way and having worked as long as you have on the team you just mentioned, I haven't worked in that many places, so I spent 12 years traveling with him, 16 years working with the company he knows in ends when he passed away and you're halfway through production and you still have to finish some episodes.

I heard you say you know your whole identity, your whole career Tony was the center of our universe, you know, I think of a song by one of my favorite bands Ben Folds Five put out this kind of quiet album a few years ago, but there's a song that I think it's named after Frank, but the lyrics of the song that I find really interesting are the idea that it's this person who works with Frank. Sinatra throughout his life and he is the person behind the scenes and talks about how every time he walked into a room people would see him but then look past him to see if Frank was coming in and how people would hold the door open. and greet him and do all these things, but then when Frank Sinatra passes away, how much things will change, how he dedicated his whole life to this character that people watch and in his career and yet when he's gone, who am I? me and how was it? through your story and I was thinking about these things, I was just thinking about the similarities between the Ben Folds song Five, you know where it is after that man who lights up the room and is the center of the universe is gone, what do we do all?

Do the following, how do you solve that? How you do? What do you do next? Well, it's a good question, part of that for me was writing the book, I mean, a big part of it was a couple of years, you know, after Tony died, when I started with it, after we finished the shows, I went to Italy for a couple of months thinking I had fixed some things in my system and then I would come back and figure out what was next and you know, I came back and I couldn't figure out what was next, I couldn't really move on, um, but you gotta be from a professional standpoint and maybe this is different, maybe we're talking about different things, but you just got off this show. you just finished all this work, you must be in demand, you must be someone who should be able to walk into any pier-based TV series show company production company and have the ability to do whatever you want, probably not, you know.

The conversations I had were a lot about well, we want to do the Anthony Bourdain of this or that and that was a very unpleasant thought, it's still difficult, so I wasn't very interested in that, it wouldn't feel like the right thing to do. do, just do that again, but with someone else it would be like an alternate version of reality where I'm doing the same moves again, except it's not Tony I'm doing it with and I feel like that's how it would be. It has been a constant reminder. I don't want to say that a lot of other things wouldn't be a constant reminder, but it would have been very difficult, so two years passed between you writing the book and his passing.

What did you do during that time? I drank. very well stuck in my dream um not so much crying surprisingly it took many more years before I could get back in touch with my emotions yeah I didn't do anything I just waited to burn off any energy I couldn't move Beyond but it just wasn't happening really and you didn't have to worry about money or anything you would have earned enough doing the race. I certainly had some money saved, but I don't even know what I'm talking about. There's a lot of emotions involved in all of this, including the kind of idea of ​​working in television again, so I know that I've always done things because they feel good and I'm really passionate about them and, um, yeah, just feeling my way through it. things and then I think the book was the only thing I could, or I was so interested or passionate, and where did the idea come from because you had never written a book before and I had never written a book before, most people don't say that, I mean, everyone in the back of their mind has a book, but they think and they dream and they say I'm an author or I'm a writer and then they sit down and write a book, but oh my God, it was so hard, oh, they're totally different things and, uh, I mean having been someone who has never written a book, but where did the idea come from?

Well, I had always joked that I should write a book because You know, we've done a lot of interesting things with the show, but that was never really very serious, but it was a friend's daughter's birthday party a couple of years later and I met to an old friend of mine who is a writer and we were just talking, she asked a similar question about whatever I was going to do next when I didn't have a good answer and she suggested that you should write a book about it, so I started writing a bit. And at first it was very easy, so I showed it to her and she thought it was very good and she connected me with an agent that she knew and they liked it and they helped me put togetherthis kind of book proposal and then all that.

It just happened really fast and I got a book deal and then I had to write the damn thing. I don't know how many months it was. I said they are just incapable of writing or procrastinating. I have many other things. things done that I had a lot of deferred maintenance until I really got scared because I was running out of time to write that damn thing and finally everything started happening very quickly and I got maybe about 10 or 15 percent of the book when, of course, Suddenly, I ran out of time and that's just a small portion of what it was, but I guess I hope it gives some sort of sense as much as humanly possible or can be captured in a book at least what it was like to be there.

Well, I mean, I think it's one of the best places to try to figure out the pros and cons or the good and bad points of any book is to just look at some reviews and you know one, two, they caught my attention. In particular, one suggests that this gives a complete picture of the good, the bad, the complicated, the madness, the stubbornness, the paranoia, the love of life, the fear of the unknown, that's what one person wrote about the book and then there are some people who maybe suggest that you're just trying to get on the money train, right, I worked with this guy, something bad happened to him.

I'm going to go ahead and try to make a lot of money and make myself super special and I don't know how to deal with that kind of criticism. I don't mind. I definitely wasn't trying to jump on any money train I could have made. which very differently. I didn't have much time to think about any of those things when I was writing the book and I haven't thought about it much afterwards, but I haven't read that review, eh, but that's not too much. Did you read reviews or not, like some people say, don't do that, but no, I say that, but keep in mind that you have like a thousand, you have a thousand global reviews and it's like 4.8 stars, so it's not like you have to do it?

I work hard, I'm a little bit like Fox News right now, where I'm at, where I'm being like there's this side to this side, but the positive has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of views. I had to work hard to find something negative. some to find out what people are complaining about here. I remember reading a review on Amazon that, um, the complaint was that it sounded like an animal house or something like uh, yeah, frat, frat, Animal House, big compliment, right? I made the review. What I would be doing writing the book to exploit Tony's memory would be increasingly difficult, but I didn't make that much money from the book.

You know you're the first person I've ever talked to. in a year or two I certainly won't be out, you know, beating the drum, so it's still very strange to me that anyone has read the book and why and why I mean you wrote a book. knowing that people have an interest, knowing that people would want to do it, I mean, I can understand the sensitivity because you're very vulnerable in it, but is it just because, frankly, the things that made you so good at working behind the scenes mean that you're made for that? staying behind the scenes is definitely a much more comfortable place to be behind the scenes, there's no doubt about that if I had had more time to process and think about what it really meant and that I was going to have to be vulnerable and I got into the book instead of just writing about a bunch of things we did.

I don't know if I would have done it. So, fortunately, I didn't have time to think about those things. I love it. I think it's that rebellious spirit and that was kind of ingrained in you, you know, they talk about the School of Hard Knocks, the school of life, I mean, you went through, let's see, you were there for 12 years, so you've seen three master's degrees and a PhD in rebellious and bold action, sounds like and snarkology, snarkology. I love it. I want to delve a little deeper into the craft because I would be very remiss if they knew that they had done thousands of hours of traveling and all this. work I'm curious like I had an episode and I'll admit to you before recording that I haven't seen all the shows.

I haven't been a super fan for like a decade, so part of me wishes that. but, for example, I chose an episode of Part Sunknown in which you guys go to Italy. What I found very interesting and curious is that it's like let's talk about miscellini, let's talk about fascism, let's talk about a spirit of people who are just willing to Be like you and let's focus on music that is about death and all that and I think that this is very strange, as well as and and the question I have from an editorial or directing point of view or even how we do this show.

Point of view is how we get out of all the stories we can tell because food, travel, people, culture and history seem to be the threads that hold together what you did, but outside of everything you could talk about and all the stories. You could talk about why you choose that, why that's what we want to focus a story on and that's just one episode story out of the hundreds of things that you guys did, Tony was pretty brilliant um in a lot of ways. A lot of that particular story was directly from him before we started filming.

I remember we were in Buenos Aires at that time. I was still trying to figure out that show plus another one in the edit and we had the shoot with President Obama not too close by. far into the future and he was just saying, I'm not talking about this Italy show and I remember being completely overwhelmed, yeah, yeah, so just for the audience, let's just park here for a moment, you just said I was in extra Aries. and uh. We have the Obama shoot coming up and they impose this other thing on me and Anthony is talking about Italy, yeah, there were years, everything overlapped, every year in August, maybe there was a week where there were only two shows in production, two. episodes, so it was always non-stop, it ended up being a fantastic episode and it was really very brilliant and inspired.

Especially in later years, he always had a very specific idea about a place, where we were going, and what story he wanted to tell. You know we'd been to a lot of those places before, so you had an idea of ​​what he meant. I mean, at that time in 2016, when we did that Rome, Trump episode, I don't remember. Yes, he was already the candidate, but he was out there, but I think no one thought that he would actually be president. Tony had this idea that fascism was on the rise and he thought Mussolini and Trump were a lot alike.

We actually found in the Archive Footage, this quote from Mussolini talking about making Italy great again, which was kind of surprising, but yeah, he just had that idea and, um, he started with: let's make Rome without any of the monuments, which is a kind of idea. existed before, like going to Paris and not filming the Eiffel Tower or seeing Washington DC and not showing any monuments, so subcultures were also a big part of what Tony liked to do, so you know how to film in Los Angeles , but uh only with the Latin community something like that and so this episode was going to be about the suburbs of Rome, the everyday Romans, it was curiosity, it was boredom, it was just this desperate need to not do what was expected, what would have driven this . episode after episode story arc after story arc story after story because it's incredibly energizing and inspiring to never do the same thing twice or it's so exhausting to never have to do the same thing twice and continually outdo yourself, well, that's it. .

The above definitely, you know, and it must have been incredibly exhausting for Tony as well. He always had to be interested and stimulated by something and he had a very short attention span, so if it was something we had done before anyone had done it. done before, at least he knew, it was definitely not possible, but he might have had some good ideas, you know, but updating them depended on the team and that could be a big challenge. Part of that Italy episode was to shoot everything anamorphically, which you know, we could have done a nice letterbox format on our normal cameras and yes, anamorphic is the widest aspect ratio, yes, two, three, five, so that's that wide screen, not 16x9 or four by three, because you and I are old but even wider, even wider, yes, exactly, and to do that we needed to shoot with these real anamorphic lenses and cameras that They were huge, these huge cameras and you know, we don't have scripts, these are all real people interacting with the show.

And so one of the ways we can capture things typically is with lighter cameras and more mobility. OMG, in this episode we had to have these box trucks and all you know is that huge Italian shooters focused on local teams like to do all this. The equipment works and we never really did it and then we manage the data because now all of a sudden you're shooting like, well, there were huge amounts of cards and data and all this stuff, yeah, we had a problem unloading everything, um into a van. . somewhere while we were filming and I was terrified that it wasn't going to work because I mean we couldn't even turn the cameras very easily or quickly let alone take them anywhere that wasn't miraculously how they used to do things and Rome is just a place like that.

Amazing city, magic found its way and in front of our lens somehow and I'm watching I'm watching the episode, head over to YouTube and you can check it out. I'm watching the episode and there is this like complete. scene in a boxing ring that also has spaghetti dinners and I'm thinking about what's going on and I'm thinking about all the waivers that you have to give people all the releases that you have to sign for potentially all the people or or already you know, and um, and the sound, and usually when you were filming something, everyone had hit marks, things were measured with tape measures, the focus pullers knew how to focus and you'd say, okay, let's go over. let's go over it again, let's go over it again, you block everything, you know where everything is going to happen for the camera and then you would do one shot, scene after scene, after scene, shot after shot and then you would reset everything to capture alternate angles, but instead you have these people boxing in real time you have crowds you have spaghetti dinners eating big I'm just thinking this is what you know as someone who owns a production company this is crazy like I don't even know why like it's like this and the guest even says this is ridiculous, like she says, this is something pretty ridiculous, uh, something that's happening right now, how do they find this or come up with this, or is it so strange that they say I love it?

The irony, well I mean that story, that location was almost um almost created for us, which was actually a long story, but it was her idea, the guest there, Asia, and um, she had talked about this place from boxing on the outskirts of town where all these old men beat each other up to a bloody Pope where the whole audience watches pasta is like ancient Roman gladiators and um, so we start looking for that scene you know in pre-production instead and we have You know, connecting with all these people turns out that she may or may not really exist, so we had to recreate it there based on what she was saying because somehow it happened, well, it wasn't a close set.

You know all those people. If it was a real match, the only thing that was changed was that we served pasta because they didn't serve pasta and we were actually, I mean, if I went to a boxing match and suddenly there was a film crew there. and someone you know shoved a plate of pasta in my face, I don't think I ate it, but all the people did anyway and they were really good sports, so after the scene it probably filmed for about three hours, two hours, maybe with Tony. Then Tony left and we had to get the food inserts and um, so we restarted, so this is nice, you know.

It is common to get food inserts to prepare the food later or to get close ups of the food after Tony leaves and very often. Me or another team member would sit down to do that and um, so I would sit down and twirl pasta on my fork and I hadn't eaten in two days, you know when you're um when you do a food show? As a director, you probably won't end up eating much because the food isn't that appealing. You said you would lose like 15 pounds per episode due to stress, about 10 pounds each trip, yes, but I was starving and I'm not the most.

Adventurous eater, but you know pasta and red sauce are a pretty easy thing to eat, so I'm turning the pasta and they're fighting in the background and Todd asked me to pause for a second while he got the food insert. I have the fork here, you know, my mouth is a little open and one of the boxers is sucked very hard and this long stringy threat of saliva mixed with sweat flew into my mouth because he had his mouth open at something like this. I had to run out and throw up, luckily not many people saw that, but okay, so here's a question I heard about the show: My hand actually turns the pasta right before I throw up all over the place, perfect part, perfect , so I would like to know your relationship with fear because youYou're terrified of flying and yet you've traveled all over the world I know you don't like it I don't know if this matters or not I know you don't like fish but anyway that's just some research that came back to me but you sound like a fish with a phobia um but you know incredibly anxious it sounds like uh you ended up nervous there's a lot of pressure on you all the time how have you grown up?

What is your relationship with Fear Has Been How, how do you do things even if, frankly, you don't want to? How have you been able to mature and what lessons have you learned in relation to fear? Yeah, well, I don't know, I think cameras make people really do it. Stupid things, including forgetting all your fears, because I guess maybe my fear of getting on or not getting the show shot was greater than my fear of, whatever it was I had to do, I mean some of the planes and helicopters that I've been on over the years, it's terrifying, but you know, often, something like that, I'd be holding a third camera and it's amazing, you can just look through the viewfinder and go down the lens barrel and command.

It feels like you're not really there, like you're watching a preview monitor and it's kind of detached, yeah, there's a detachment in that way that, in a way, helped. I remember I used to get that question a lot more when I started traveling because everyone knew how scared I was not to fly, for example, and I remember back then I used to say that I would never let fear get in the way of an opportunity. or incredible experience, so yeah, I guess my kind of desire to do whatever it was or be a part of it outweighed the fear, I mean.

If those things weren't scary in a certain way, it would have been much less interesting for a lot of the team to deal with the phobias and fears that you know were regularly part of it. I mean, Tony was pretty. shy and um germophobic yet I know there were a lot of things that he ate that he wasn't very happy eating um but you know you never let that get in your way, it's a bit like reality, you know, not letting it be get in the way of doing something fun or stupid consequences. Screw every project I've been a part of and am very proud of.

There's one guiding principle that you know and people call it everything. different types of things North Star and all these things you know with my team when we boil it all down at the end of the day it's like just making people look good, that's our thing, like we make people look good, everything The rest will take care of itself while you were putting these programs together. They had? Did they have that one thing they would always come back to? Was it entertainment or storytelling or adventure? I think we all did, it was make Tony happy, make Tony happy. happy and you didn't mind working in that situation, what do you mean?

I want to surround myself as an entrepreneur. I want to surround myself with people who have the same passions. I have the same mission that I have and I want to make myself happy. It makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable, even though it makes me feel hypocritical and selfish and self-centered and all that stuff, and I want to serve others, but there comes a point where it gets a little unhealthy, and from some of the stories, it sounds like that. sometimes it was healthy and sometimes it wasn't, so you've spent all these years doing that and doing this job and I guess you were okay with that.

I mean, I would challenge anyone to spend any amount of time with Tony and not in some way. You kind of let yourself get caught up in that Vortex of wanting to, you know, please him. I mean, you know when you're around someone with a Vision as clear as that, um, it's a very powerful thing, uh, you know, so what was that Vision? we were all there to help serve Tony and make him happy and he had this drive and desire what was that Vision he had what he wanted he did it with such conviction uh I mean it could have been as simple as making a prank on a member of the crew uh or the time you know he brought a very realistic fake rat to Madagascar because there was an outbreak of bubonic plague, you know, and placing that dead rat perfectly was very important to him, there were times when whatever he was interested in was more important in the scene, you know he could like Scuttle or throw in an entire scene just to prove a point.

I mean, ultimately, nine times out of ten it was putting on a good show. I mean, I think 10 times out of ten really because it was everything. about that and that could show us anything that seemed interesting to him. You know, there wasn't really a mission like the ER abroad. Yes, there was no Mission. It was a little self-indulgent. You know, Enterprise, basically, having a good I think what people admire and like is almost like rock and roll, you know, you like it, you're doing something, you're creating something, an environment and an experience, you're sharing a story, you are making connections, there really aren't any.

There's always a framework or a structure or an ABC to how it goes together, but when it feels right, it feels right and when you have something to say or are influenced by outside forces, you keep doing it. I think what I admire most is Just the courage and the dedication and I'll go back to the rebellious, bold, brazen spirit of being like that is what I want to say and then and then say you know, I've heard you describe the fact that You know you guys used to trying to figure out how many bad words they can say in an episode and you know how far we can take things and how far we can go, you know, going 50 more like, hey, we know that the lawyers and the regulators and and the standards that are going to help us will never will allow us to do these things, so let's go ahead and just add a bunch of things that we know will never be approved just so we can do these other things on the other end. together and um, I guess I'm looking to try to analyze something that really comes down to Art and Vibe and a Creator creating what really intrigued him, maybe in the moment you know he was always very committed and there was always a challenge like, um, like the one about the anecdotes you just mentioned about bad words or the amount of blood that could be in a scene and how we would go further.

I mean, something like that. Tony wasn't necessarily interested in Gore, but he knew that was like you said such a hot topic with the sensors that you know, I mean him in that case, like this first kind of director's cut, if you will, of a scene that was so drenched in Gore that it would be impossible to ever convey, um, just the fact that a bunch of sp suits had to, you know, have that conversation about you know that or anal felching or you know, oral sex. I loved that there were these people somewhere in a boardroom, these very Prim proper. people who had to be discussing this and, you know, mentioning time codes and all these quotes, and even though that would never air, that was, you know, very attractive to him, there was never anyone to call him on the phone . you know, good times, bad times, it was always very, there's a lot of emotion and passion and everything um, so yeah, I guess I don't know if that answers your question, and more and more as we conclude the conversation.

I like to finish. with this question and I'm curious for you because of all the experiences you've had with all the work you've done with this extraordinary book and with everything you have ahead of you and still do for you at the end of the day, what does it all come down to? ? What does it all boil down to? I don't know. Recently I have been enjoying some very simple pleasures that I feel like I have missed out on for quite a few years. I had the most amazing peach of my life this summer. I don't know what it was.

I have this complicated relationship with food because of working for so many years as if food were the object. and it's very difficult to work with food and weird things and gross things and see how sausages are made and all that kind of stuff, so I feel like over the years I've forgotten how magical food can be and this summer I just ate this Peach that I don't know just blew my mind and was the most simple and wonderful thing. um, it was great. I feel like I have to ask the question that's too direct, but this whole experience just really you're totally, yeah, totally, yeah, uh, I mean all the parts, you're not a normal good photographer, some of the things you know that would happen, like wealth and the kind of inequalities of privilege, it really messes with your head like we know you.

We're filming all day in the favelas and then you come back to this nice hotel room and you see human suffering, good things, bad things, whatever, it's not really that human, but this is to be consumed by a camera to then being commodified and it's a strange thing that distances Humanity from the people involved and then I'm getting ready to leave for India when you know the news came that Tony had died, that's still a little unreal all these years later, but You know that writing the book was very useful for me. Processing a lot of that stuff like it's been kind of a 16-year mad dash and I haven't really had time to come up and sit down and process it because it's all happening so fast that you don't really know.

Think about it, I have to get over some of that stuff, but my nerves are definitely still a little shot. If I hear a loud noise, I'll jump a little faster. I'm sure he would have returned. In the day I still wouldn't want to go back to being the person I was before and I would like to lose all these things that I have gained, as painful as some of them may be because they somehow make you who you are and I am sure that I am a person stronger after surviving all this madness, but yeah, it definitely gets you excited.

I don't think anyone understands when they talk about what a great job it was or how much they would like a job. In a job like that you don't really understand what it can do to you, but I mean, I think any job gets you on your feet, none of us should have to work, that would be good, but boredom probably affects you a lot too.