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Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Project Summary

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Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown Poster
Genre
Adventure, Documentary
Featured Content
Ceremony, Cuisine, Funeral, Political History, Shadow Puppets
Islands
Bali, Java
Regions
Badung, Denpasar, Gianyar, Jakarta, Nusa Penida
Narrator

Anthony Bourdain

Talent

Anthony Bourdain

Producers

Jeffrey Allen

Tom Vitale

Michael Steed

Director

Todd Liebler

Tom Vitale

Camera Operators

Frederic Menou

Other Crew

Tami Tacklind

Joe Yaggi

Djuna Bewley

Desak Hartati

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown Poster

FORMAT

TV Series

RELEASED

2018

EPISODE

S11E3

TITLE

Indonesia

Overview

Bourdain travels across the globe to uncover little-known areas of the world and celebrate diverse cultures by exploring food and dining rituals. Known for his curiosity, candor, and acerbic wit, Bourdain takes viewers off the beaten path of tourist destinations – including some war-torn parts of the world – and meets with a variety of local citizens to offer a window into their lifestyles, and occasionally communes with an internationally lauded chef on his journeys.

In This Episode

Bourdain begins his trip through Indonesia by eating spicy Padang food in Jakarta with a performer who uses shadow puppets to tell folktales about finding balance between opposing forces—dark and light, good and evil—an ever-present idea in Indonesian culture. As he travels throughout the country, Bourdain learns about the nation’s ethnic and culinary diversity and how it reconciles its violent history with its democratic present. In Bali, Bourdain confronts Indonesia’s Eat Pray Love–inspired tourism industry and observes a traditional Balinese funeral.

Jungle Run Production Services

For what was, tragically, the final episode filmed for this landmark series, Jungle Run worked closely with Zero Point Zero to cultivate story lines, contributor access and locations. A dozen pre-interviews were conducted to narrow down possibilities and to find the most diplomatic yet impactful way forward on a story thread of special interest to Tony: anti-communist massacres in 1965-66, with ties to both Indonesian and US government officials.

And because truth is stranger than fiction, a politic window into that historical darkness was developed around Bali's unique perspectives on "seen" and "unseen" worlds, and the portal between them that is death.

A conversation with anthropologist Dr. Lawrence Blair comparing the Balinese send-off and Tony's own wishes upon his demise led us into the final sequence at a Balinese cremation ceremony. As Djuna led camerman Todd Liebler around close-ups on the funeral pyre, she pointed to what no one could have imagined would be the last frames shot with Tony -- a long shot wherein he's barely seen, then unseen, behind waves of cremation smoke.

The shock of Tony's suicide at the beginning of the next Parts Unknown shoot was... immense. Many at ZPZ, including director Tom Vitale and camerman Todd Leibler, had worked with Tony throughout the entirety of their careers. And though we'd only been sucked onto their whirlwind over the last few months, we felt the sense of family fostered by a crew that spent more time on the road than with real family back at home. And forged under the special trials brought on by productions that push envelopes through storms of egos, social unrest and unruly natural elements. (We'll spare you the saga of a near-stranding on a far-flung island, amid rising surf and falling tides.)

When poor, grief-stricken Tom was tasked with cutting the final ep of Parts Unknown, minus the voice that, for years, had pulled even the most effed-up shoots into rousing, insightful memories, he called on Joe to source a patch of narration from a Balinese expert on shadow puppetry. Alas, the theme rounded back onto the dark side of Bali's seen and unseen worlds.

Two years later, Tom released "In the Weeds, Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain", a memoir and self-narrated audio book that had Jungle Runners Joe and Djuna in stitches and in tears. Nothing comes close to painting the travails and the triumphs of real-world, front-lines production of cutting-edge TV. "The more things went wrong, the better it was for the show. Fortunately, everything fell apart constantly." Amen!

Video

Gallery

Locations

Bali

Badung

W Bali Seminyak

W Bali Seminyak

Bali

Denpasar

Taman Baca Kesiman

Taman Baca Kesiman

Java

Jakarta

RM Surya, Bendungan Hilir

RM Surya, Bendungan Hilir

Bali

Nusa Penida

Nusa Penida

Nusa Penida

Bali

Gianyar

Gianyar

Gianyar

Java

Jakarta

Blok M Night Market

Blok M Night Market

Java

Jakarta

Face Bar

Face Bar

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Production Companies

Distributors