How Matt Johnson tackled making a film about an icon

I could see clearly, as soon as I started talking to people about it, there are fans of his that view him really as a dead saint. And right away that tells you, okay, be really careful because it means certain people's expectations of this terrestrial man are going to be well beyond what an actual person can be on camera. Bourdain couldn't have started this movie as a saint and then ended the movie as a saint. Like, it never would have worked. And so the movie is trying to get at, I think, the more difficult, complicated parts of his childhood, his relationship with his mom, his relationship with his peers, and how he viewed himself entering the adult world, which is something that Dom and I really, really related to and felt as though we almost had a conspiracy with Anthony Bourdain, the three of us. It was like, ah, I think we can tell this story and make his life and legacy not more complicated necessarily, but more useful to the people who worship him. A hidden message of his career is that just because you are 40 years old and you feel as though your life didn't become what you thought does not mean that it's over. He was a drug-addicted line cook for much of his young adult life, and then all of a sudden becomes the most famous globetrotting food writer who's really ever lived. And I think there's deep wisdom in that, is that you can fail and fail and fail and fail and fail, and then all of a sudden become yourself.