Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain premiered in theaters across the country this week, but not without an immense amount of controversy stemming from the use of A.I. to recreate Bourdain’s voice in the film. Now, Bourdain’s ex-wife has confirmed that she did not give filmmaker Morgan Neville permission to deepfake Bourdain’s voice. The drama began when Neville claimed to Variety that he had “checked…with [Bourdain’s] widow and his literary executor, just to make sure” they were OK with the development of the vocal deepfake. Once the article dropped, Ottavia Busia — who was married to the culinary icon from 2007 until their separation in 2016, responded directly to Neville’s claim, writing, “I certainly was NOT the one who said Tony would have been cool with that.” Ottavia’s tweet ca...
Tomorrow, fans of the late great Anthony Bourdain can get a deeper look at his unabashedly adventurous life with the documentary Roadrunner. But not all of the Bourdain quotes were actually spoken by the chef and writer during his lifetime. To help Roadrunner along, filmmaker Morgan Neville used AI learning technology to deepfake Bourdain’s voice for three separate quotes. All the AI quotes do come from Bourdain. But they might’ve been written instead of spoken, or the original audio wasn’t quite up to snuff. The deepfaked voice was discovered by the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner, who asked Neville how he got a soundbite of Bourdain reading an email he’d sent a friend. Turns out, it was AI all along. “There were three quotes there I wanted his voice for that there were no recordings of,” Nevil...
When Anthony Bourdain died of suicide in 2018, it hit the world with a force of an earthquake: he was a man who coupled a devil-may-care cynicism with a huge, beating heart that shone through in everything from his dishes to his documentaries. In that spirit, Morgan Neville‘s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain takes us straightforwardly through Bourdain’s highs and lows: His early days as a chef, his runaway success with Kitchen Confidential, the travel shows that would come, his struggles with drug addiction on both sides of his life, and so much more. His friends and colleagues pop on screen as talking heads — John Lurie, brother Chris, fellow chef David Chang — reflecting on his incredible, mercurial nature…before shaking their heads at what he’d become near the en...
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Detroit Free Press / Getty It’s been two years since the shocking death of beloved chef and fine culture cuisine connoisseur, Anthony Bourdain, and still his absence remains felt throughout the world as the man was one of the gourmet game’s premier icons as he taught us about humanity, diverse cultures, and of course, food. Though it still feels a bit too soon, a new documentary centering around the life and impact that Anthony Bourdain left in his time on earth is set to drop dubbed ROADRUNNER: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. Directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), ROADRUNNER will feature the Parts Unknown star’s rise from kitchen chef to the revered worldwide culture savant who made his way into our homes, our kitche...
Shortly after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978, Anthony Bourdain spent his days cooking in some of the most famous restaurants in New York City. In his free time, he started publishing works of fiction, too, but it was only his nonfiction short stories and books like Kitchen Confidential that ever received widespread attention. It looks like that’s about to change, because Bourdain’s second novel, the 1997 crime thriller Gone Bamboo, has just been picked up for a TV series adaptation. Producers Webster and Robert Stone have acquired the rights to Gone Bamboo and plan to create a pilot for a scripted series, reports Deadline. Before now, the Stone brothers’ producing credits have included The Conspirator, Gone in Sixty Seconds, and The Negotiator — aka Hollywoo...