I’ve given this some thought and concluded that because the fake voice is reading Bourdain’s real words, it’s okay. But the filmmakers also should have disclosed it, just as documentaries routinely reveal that incidents were re-enacted for the purposes of the film.
I would have no issue with this if they had simply disclosed it - a simple crawl or caption at the bottom of the screen during the 3 times the AI voice was pretending to be AB would have sufficed. But having NOT disclosed it - it taints the documentary a bit for me. Although I’ll still watch it if I can in the theatre prior to going to HBO Max, which I don’t have.
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FWIW, I read that CNN also plans to air the documentary though I haven’t yet seen any details.
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Thx for that info…fingers crossed they do!
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My first problem with it is that the Director, in several interviews, seems to be indicating that there are more instances of this & he didn’t disclose the others. Secondly, I don’t like another door of “fake” being opened. Even if this one is totally faithful to the original words, others will definitely not be. Cant wait for the 1st political ad photoshopping someone into an important meeting and making statements while there. Its no wonder why so many folks cant discern what’s real anymore and are content labelling anything they don’t agree with as “fake news”. Real life Forrest Gump times.
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I don’t recall seeing anything about undisclosed audio manipulation in the film, but I’ll take your word for it, and I agree that it’s troubling. But the deepfakes door has been open for a while. To perhaps somewhat assuage your fears, there are ways to detect them. I’m not too worried about political content being faked, since it’s already pretty common, albeit not very sophisticated - remember slowed-down Nancy Pelosi? - and there’s a small army of citizen and professional journalists who are very quick to call bullshit when they see it.
What troubles me more is that people will be able to claim something is a deepfake when it’s not. Think of how useful THAT would be to certain people caught on tape saying or doing things they’d rather not cop to.
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I agree. Helen Rosner’s New Yorker piece is good reading The Ethics of a Deepfake Anthony Bourdain Voice
“No Reservations” is on all day on Direct TV Friday. It’s on the Cooking Channel 232 on DTV.
Yes, BoneAppetite linked to it upthread. She’s right that people have an emotional attachment to Bourdain that’s probably coloring their reaction. And I would add that non-fiction film presents a set of challenges due to the impossibility of objectivity, so - especially as technology advances - we keep having to ask how much fakeness is too much. Because no documentary is zero percent fake.
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New yorker on Roadrunner back in July. I haven’t seen it.
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Mark Wiens on YouTube -
NEW JERSEY, USA - When I was in New Jersey, I decided to go on the official Anthony Bourdain Food Trail (https://visitnj.org/anthony-bourdain). It’s a designated food tour featuring 10 different restaurants that were featured on Anthony Bourdain’s New Jersey episode of Parts Unknown.
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from YouTube:
If you haven’t already watched Day 1 (https://youtu.be/JoR-qjBRgaM) and Day 2 (https://youtu.be/LJ2IlVuyr5s) of this Anthony Bourdain food tour in New Jersey, make sure you go back and watch them now.
Now, let’s start Day 3! We spent the night in Atlantic City and then drove first thing in the morning to Barnegat in the pine forest, and then on to Camden to complete this entire food tour.
Lucille’s Country Cooking (https://goo.gl/maps/XKxDkZQgvP6xHvvSA) - Total price - $19.89 -
First thing we headed to Lucille’s Country Cooking for breakfast, a classic New Jersey diner, but in the middle of the pine forests. They served a range of American breakfast dishes and I tried to order the same meal that Anthony Bourdain ate.
Tony & Ruth Steaks (https://goo.gl/maps/caQoHyrcJahjyo6F6) - Total price - $15.00 -
Next we drove on to Camden, New Jersey and headed straight to Tony & Ruth Steaks. Unfortunately they were still closed due to the Covid situation and only offered takeaway from the window. But that’s alright, I still ordered a few sandwiches and then ate them in the car. The bacon and egg sandwich was especially delicious.
Donkey’s Place (https://g.page/donkeysplace?share) - Price - $11 per cheesesteak -
Finally for the grand finale of this Anthony Bourdain New Jersey food tour, we headed to Donkey’s Place for a Jersey cheesesteak. This was one of the places I was most looking forward to eating in New Jersey on this entire tour. It didn’t disappoint, one of the world’s best cheesesteaks without a doubt. Quite a bit different from cheesesteaks I ate in Philly. I loved the huge quantity of onions and the poppy seed kaiser roll. It was soooo good, and the perfect way to end this entire food tour.
And that completes this New Jersey Anthony Bourdain food tour. Thank you for watching this entire series!
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I had to stop watching Mark. The glut just started to bother me. Mark needs to take a break! Seems like a fun guy…just too much over eating for me.
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I agree. Plus, he seems just too “on.”
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We discussed him on the NJ chicken sandwich thread
also.
(I think 
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Having watched the movie, I was a little surprised that his suicide didn’t come as a surprise to anybody that was close to him.
It was disturbing to watch him sitting at an outdoor table with two other people, drinking and talking, when suddenly he just closed his eyes, passed out, and fell of the chair onto the ground, out cold. I knew he was an olympic caliber alcoholic, but that was disturbing.
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Ben Rhodes is the author of After the Fall: Being American in the World We Made . He is a former speechwriter and deputy national security adviser to Barack Obama
Excerpt -
. He could, as Leerhsen reminds us, be insecure and act like a jerk. But he was also a serious enthusiast—for food, music, movies, and writing—who searched for decades for a way to measure up to the 20th-century American-male archetype he admired: a reckless and charismatic man like Hunter S. Thompson or Marlon Brando. Like his heroes, he strove to transcend the afflictions that Leerhsen details, and succeed on his own terms amid the sanitized and profit-hungry landscape of American culture. And after a middling career as a chef and one-off success as a memoirist, Bourdain, remarkably, found his outlet on an unlikely 21st-century medium: as a travel television host.
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