A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [26]
There was a lot of food there. Once again, fearful of giving offense to my very kind hosts, I scarfed everything in front of me, smiling and nodding appreciatively, conversing (with the help of my not noticeably disturbed brother) in my tortured French. The drive back to the Norman Bates Passion Pit in Arcachon was the longest journey in memory. Global Alan, in the car ahead, had his head hanging out the window at a crazy angle, periodically drooling as we passed through quaint country villages, by Crusade-era churches and lovely old farmhouses. Alberto, the assistant producer, at the wheel of the lead car, was soon feeling bad, as well. My brother drove our car, feeling fine, taking the turns way too hard for my taste – my stomach beginning to flip and gurgle like some incipient Krakatoa. I held on for dear life, hoping to make it back to the privacy of my hotel bathroom before erupting. I just made it.
Five hours of rib-cracking agony later, I was lying, near delirious, in my ugly hotel room, trash bucket to my right, alternately sweating and shivering under a pink poly-blend blanket, the television remote control out of reach on the floor. I’d just been considering the possibility – however slight – that I might someday feel better, when suddenly, the TV show I’d not really been watching ended and the highlights of what was next flickered across my screen. The true horror of France revealed itself in all its terrible quirkiness. This has to be a joke, I thought. It can’t be! It’s a punch line, for Chrissakes! No! But it was happening. A ninety-minute biography – with clips – of the glorious career of that great French hero, the recipient of France’s highest honors, Jerry Lewis. The great man’s entire oeuvre coming tout de suite to my television screen, promising to bombard my already-toxin-riddled brain with a lifetime of mugging, simpering, whining shtick.
It was too much. I tried, in my desperately weakened condition, to reach the remote control, felt the blood drain from my head and the bile rise in my throat, and had to fall back into the pillows, inspiring a whole new bout of dry heaves. I couldn’t turn the damn TV off, couldn’t change the station. Already, scenes from The Disorderly Orderly were searing their way into my softened brain, causing me whole new dimensions of pain and discomfort. I picked up the phone and called Matthew, the one member of our crew who was as yet unafflicted, and begged for him to come over and change the station.
‘Is it The Day the Clown Cried?’ he asked. ‘That’s a vastly underrated classic, I’m told. Never seen by American audiences. Jerry plays a prisoner in a concentration camp. That Italian guy won an Oscar for the same idea! What was it? Life Is Beautiful? Jerry was way ahead of his time.’
‘Please, you gotta help me,’ I gasped. ‘I’m dying here. I can’t take it. You don’t do something fast, I’m a dead man. They’re gonna have to fly Bobby Flay in to shoot the Cambodia stuff. You wanna see Bobby Flay in a sarong?’
Matthew thought about that. ‘I’ll be right over.’
He showed up a few moments later – with his camera running. He stood over my bed, getting a ‘white balance’ off my bloodless face. He filmed and filmed, while the room tilted and whirled around me, panning back and forth between me, moaning in my sodden sheets, and Jerry, in Cinderfella. He shot close-ups as I heaved and pleaded. Cutaways of the out-of-reach remote control, slow pullbacks to reveal the source of my torment, the distance between me and the remote