September 2009 Archive

The following posts were made in September 2009. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this archive if you would like to take your time reading through our posts.

I Told You I Smelled Emmy!

By Anthony Bourdain on September 14, 2009 9:49 AM | Permalink | 201 Comments

Saturday night at the 61st Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, my long suffering friends and colleagues Todd Liebler and Zach Zamboni-who, for the last few years have sacrificed anything resembling normal lives to follow me around the world pointing cameras in my general direction-scored a major upset victory by bringing home the award for cinematography in the non-fiction category. Todd, who has garnered a not entirely undeserved worldwide reputation for stumbling into things, bounded up to that stage with astounding speed and grace-suddenly, a veritable Nijinsky, sure footedly making what was easily one of the smoothest, nicest, most coherent and entertaining acceptance speeches of the night. Zach, who hardly got a word in, managed to look very dashing in his tuxedo. The two of them spent the rest of the evening basking happily in the admiring praise of other directors of photography, camera operators and cinematographers, few of whom have likely had to make do with a bag of risotto on a skateboard as a camera platform. It was the greatest thing I've seen in a very long time and I am over the moon with happiness for them. Of the three Emmys we were nominated for-this was the one I wanted to win badly. All you have to do is compare the looks of season one-with those of recent seasons to see how hard these guys work, how monstrously talented they are-and how much they've been able to do with so very little.

Photo courtesy of Betty Hinchman; Zach Zamboni and
Todd Liebler accept their Emmy award for Outstanding
Cinematography for a Non-fiction series.

Congratulations, my friends-with whom I've spent far more time over the years than with my family. And thank you.

Continue Reading I Told You I Smelled Emmy!.

I Told You I Smelled Emmy!

…..I Shall Wear the Bottoms of My Trousers Rolled

By Anthony Bourdain on September 5, 2009 10:58 AM | Permalink | 125 Comments

I slipped my thumb ring off my finger and into the Bosphorus the other day.  It was the last of many steps in an ongoing, inevitable and long overdue process of de-Fierification.  Call it an embracing of my inner Cosby.  My sous-chef Steven gave me that ring a long time ago. Back in the day, we, all of us in the crew at the Supper Club got them, on the eve of a James Beard dinner event. A phalanx of famous, better known and (frankly, better all-around) chefs and their assistants were joining us in the kitchen the next night and we wanted something appropriately white trashy to set us apart, distinguish us as the home team.  Like the skull and knife logo, I drew on our jackets for the occasion, the rings signified a sort of underdog unit pride.

We may have kind of sucked—but we worked hard, dammit—and if nothing else, habitually  cranked out a helluva lot more dinners than anybody on the visiting team.  By the time I dropped the thing in the water, the ring had outlived its usefulness.  It went the way of my earring, joining—in one sense or another—my Dead Boys T-shirt, my telescoping billyclub and my crack pipe in some Davey Jones locker of once cherished but now abandoned objects. I think Steven will forgive me.

Continue Reading …..I Shall Wear the Bottoms of My Trousers Rolled.

…..I Shall Wear the Bottoms of My Trousers Rolled