Ignored             Obscured              Restored

I’ve always been a fan of Anthony Bourdain.  I read his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.  I watched his television series, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.  I even own a couple of his cookbooks (I love his recipe for French onion soup), and we both favor a classic Negroni as our cocktail of choice.  So I was excited to learn that a Bourdain biopic, Tony, co-written and directed by Matt Johnson, has been receiving positive reviews from critics.

The film opened in select U.S. theaters yesterday and will expand to nationwide release on August 21.

News of the movie reminded me of my favorite use of music in Parts Unknown.  In Season 5, Episode 2 (“Miami”), Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” plays in the background during a beachside conversation between the two men.

Bourdain felt a close kinship with Pop, drawn to their shared anti-establishment attitudes and rebellious personalities.  Although Bourdain interviewed countless celebrities throughout his career, he was rarely starstruck — except when it came to Iggy Pop.  In his field notes for the show, Bourdain wrote:

“It was a dream come true to actually hang out with my hero and (for better or worse) early role model for the filming of the Miami episode of Parts Unknown.”

More importantly, “The Passenger” perfectly reflects Bourdain’s worldview, travel philosophy, and complex psyche, both musically and lyrically.

“I am a passenger / And I ride and I ride”

Bourdain famously rejected labels such as “journalist” or “expert.”  Instead, he saw himself as a witness — a passenger moving through other people’s worlds.  His approach was built on listening, observing, and experiencing cultures on their own terms rather than imposing his own perspective.  Like the song’s narrator, he was content to look out the window and take it all in.

“He sees the stars come out tonight / He sees the city’s ripped backsides”

There is a persistent undercurrent of melancholy and detachment running through the song. Despite having a job that millions envied — one that allowed him to travel the world and experience its many wonders — Bourdain often wrestled with loneliness and existential fatigue.  He was constantly surrounded by people, yet frequently seemed to view himself as an outsider looking in through a pane of glass.

“So let’s ride and ride and ride and ride”

Bourdain maintained a relentless travel schedule, spending nearly 250 days a year on the road filming. The song captures that sense of perpetual motion — the feeling that there is always another destination, another story, another meal waiting around the corner.  For Bourdain, the journey itself became the destination, and movement was both a calling and, perhaps, a necessity.

As audiences discover — or rediscover — Bourdain through Tony, “The Passenger” endures as his unofficial theme song: equal parts wanderlust, loneliness, curiosity, and the perpetual search for what lies just beyond the horizon.

Enjoy… until next week.