Visiting Chernobyl was a very sad and scary experience.  I think I can speak for the whole crew when I say that if we were just visiting Ukraine on vacation, we would not have gone there. For the sake of the show, we decided to check out the power plant and the town down the road, Prypiat. Our guide, Sergey, gave us a long list of do’s and don’ts while filming in the Prypiat area. Most of them were don’ts.  Don’t touch anything.  Don’t wander off any paved roads.  Don’t let any leaves or branches touch you.  Don’t walk on or kick any moss that’s on the ground.  Don’t eat or drink outside our vehicles.  Bottom line: watch what you’re doing.

Not ten minutes after Sergey repeated these instructions, he led us down a dirt path surrounded by bushes and trees with low hanging branches.  We tried our best not to touch the branches, but we all ended up touching leaves and shrubs, and a few of us even got smacked with branches. Our guide told us to be sure to wash our clothes a few times before wearing them again. But for peace of mind, once we returned to our hotel, I, like everyone else on the crew, threw away the clothes I was wearing, as well as my shoes.

Recalling the tragedy that was Chernobyl is spooky enough, but actually visiting ground zero and the surrounding areas of the nuclear disaster will leave a lasting impression on anyone who visits.  And apparently, a lot of people visit. When we were leaving Prypiat, we noticed more vans coming into the secured area.  Those vans turned out to be tour vans, filled with tourists mostly from Russia and Eastern Europe taking pictures of everything around them.  I knew they weren’t journalists because most were dressed in Euro-trash-themed clothing and nearly all had disposable and pocket-sized digital cameras.  It seems that one way to make money to help build a new sarcophagus over the old sarcophagus that covers Reactor Number 4 is to charge money to explore the grounds of one of the biggest man-made disasters of all time.

After packing up our equipment, we drove beyond the 30-kilometer security perimeter, back to habitable grounds.  We pulled over at the first convenience shop we saw to get water and snacks for everyone. It was a dim lit, mostly empty space, with a few bare shelves, but they did have water.  However, instead of necessities that you would normally find in your neighborhood store, this place predominately had merchandise.  Chernobyl merchandise.  T-shirts, coffee mugs, calendars, the list goes on. All of which read “CHERNOBYL 4-26-86” with the universal sign for radioactivity replacing the “O” in Chernobyl.  It almost felt like a scene out of Spaceballs.  “Chernobyl the lunchbox, Chernobyl the breakfast cereal, Chernobyl the Flame Thrower- the kids love this one.”  So I did what any late-twenties American would do.  I bought as much stuff as I could carry.

one of the coffee mugs Josh brought back for the office…

I was told while filming abroad, always be on your toes.  The No Reservations crew is considerably small, but we make up for it with all of our equipment: cameras, rigs, lights, etc.  Needless to say, all this gear adds up to a pretty penny.  Actually, not just pretty, but a beautiful, gorgeous penny.  With this kind of merchandise, we all do our part to make sure none of our expensive equipment grows legs and magically walks away.  We do little things to help prevent this: always double check to make sure we lock the production van doors, we make sure someone stands watch over any gear we might pile up on a sidewalk.  But unfortunately, all of these precautionary measures don’t stand a chance with the sneakiest thieves of the world.

We had just finished filming a scene at a pizzeria, near the train station in Naples.  This was quite the busy part of town too, and it being lunchtime, the sidewalks were crowded with all walks of life.  And the street was jammed packed full of cars, trucks, and buses- with scooters and motorcycles weaving in and out of the spaces between the vehicles trying to make the light.  Somewhere in the confusion of all this, one of our cameras, a Sony EX-1… disappeared.  My best guess, some one spotted us with all this equipment, and drove up on a motorcycle and snatched the camera while we were loading other equipment into our production van- and then zoomed off.

But the important thing is that no one got hurt.  So the next step was to file a police report.  We had a back up camera, so there was no need to stop production for this minor speed bump- so the rest of the crew went on to the next location to film.  Our local Production Assistant, Mario, and I took a taxi to the nearest police station where we waited to talk to a detective.

Mario was my translator for my conversation with the detective.  We went into his office, which was very bare.  Nothing on the walls and the only thing on his desk was a computer circa 1994.  We sat down and I started telling Mario what happened, to translate into Italian for the detective.  After Mario told him the long, drawn our story, the detective looked at Mario and then looked at me.  He spoke a few short words in Italian to Mario- and Mario looked at me and said, “What do you want him to do about it?”  I then explained that I needed a police report to give to our insurance company.  Don’t get me wrong, the officer was extremely helpful, but I’m pretty sure it was his first police report he had ever filed, because I was dictating to him what should go into the report.

Once the detective finished the report, he printed me a copy.  I asked if he could also email it to me so I could send it back to our production company in New York City.  He asked Mario to inform me that the police station didn’t have Internet access.  So then I asked if I could use their fax machine, but it turned out the station didn’t have a fax machine either.  The detective must have seen the look of disappointment on my face, so he offered Mario and I cups of espresso.  He came back with the little cups, with sugar already added, and set them down on the desk.  He sat back down in his seat with a smug look on his face and waited for us to try the coffee.  It seemed he was very proud of the drink he had just made us and was waiting to see our reaction to the espresso.  I tried it and realized why the police station didn’t have Internet access or fax machine, or any other basic office equipment for that matter.  They must have spent their whole budget on an espresso machine, because that was the best damn cup of coffee I’ve had in my life.

Exodus

At quarter after three in the afternoon I ran a red at Franklin and Wilcox, directly into a swarm of locusts at Cahuenga. The intersection utterly consumed by a massive, undulating, cloud about 25 yards across by same, exoskeletons pinging off the Bronco like diabolical popcorn. Hipsters bolt into the crepe place for cover. The phone rings. It’s Tony’s people, saying about some type of difficulty in Cuba so now Boston show is shooting January, not April, and can I make it. Didn’t catch details, phone died.

Google turned up nothing on SoCal locusts but Nathaniel West.

Last train out of “snowmageddon” NYC. Two weeks at the Liberty Hotel. My grandfather did a longer bit than that here following some gross misunderstanding or other back when it was still Suffolk County [Jail], just before it was shut down for violations of the Constitution considerably more egregious than his, and for being a hellhole. Apart from the coffee, conditions in the building have improved since then. Still no pool though.

“I am yoah fahtha.”

Wind pounding at the giant, Gothic window (tie-fighter snaps to mind), snow swirling in great funnels up through the atrium and whipping off into the sky. So it goes with morning itinerary.

New Southie

There are tanning salons, plural, onBroadway. That is to say there are sunburn-eries in Southie. Grueling three-hour trudge thigh-deep in snow revealed that, while remains true you can’t swing the entrails of a Yankee fan here without hitting a roast beef sandwich place, better than half of the spots I’ve recommended (“fixed,” in the parlance) no longer exist, else are gentrified to oblivion and therefore useless location-wise, if not entirely. Hoofing it back to the T, Diane appears undeterred. Like an Aleut, when the seals are off.

It was as if Zhivagoʼs Roast Beef had never existed.

Woke to the phone. The concierge re the rental car, delivered this morning and ready to go. I crashed a convention breakfast on the second floor, discussed e-marketing over a passable crepe with an unconcealed douchebag from Raynham, then headed to Downtown Crossing DMV to get a driver’s license. Prediction: shanghai’ed by some alleged violation well past the edge of recall and forced into an interminable and mindless bureaucratic groove before being popped back onto the street umpteen hours later with more court dates and even less money. Happens every time.

Except this time.

In Two-Hundred Feet, Can’t Get There From Here

Rental car has a GPS that talks absolute shite all day long. Add that my mental map of Boston is to begin with wildly situational, let’s call it, and pre-Big Dig, and my sense of direction is limited to vertical, and you– Diane and Alan, specifically– have a woefully incompetent tour guide. Reduced to a crop of broadstroke navigational aids including Boston Harbor, the sun, the Citgo sign, and for personal reasons the corner of LaGrange and Tremont (http://bit.ly/aTPWcg), we ping- ponged across the Zakim bridge six times before we got to Southie. Murphy’s Law was closed for some reason. But Croke Park, neé Whitey’s, wasn’t.

Later, Mink managed to extract from Sally that her band is called Geoff Leopard. Meaning they don’t have to rock. Yet, they do. We checked.

“Count Your Fuckin’ Knuckles”

The plan originally leaned more on The Friends Of Eddie Coyle locations on the South Shore, around Hingham, where I grew up. Nice, in Spring. A tour of Hingham out of season would involve– I have no goddamn idea. Pointing to condos where vital pieces of civilization once existed; ding-dong ditch, maybe. Nothing simultaneously interesting enough for television and legal. Tony & I were clear (I think) on all this over a scandalously reasonable (probably) number of Negronis at the hotel a few months ago.

“scandalously reasonable”

I have spent quality time in Southie over the years and I do know the neighborhood– well enough to know that even if I’d been there a thousand times, I’m not from there. Period. To most kids (I’m going to gloss over why I just now automatically typed “kids” there) in South Boston I’m “lace curtain.” Which is some sanctimonious shit less fortunate Irish people from Boston say about more fortunate Irish people from Boston who are still less fortunate than Brahmin, who we’ll leave out of it. The phrase ought to be reserved for truly duplicitous, patronizing types but is invariably fired off ill-judged. Doesn’t matter. In the end it reflects Southie’s opinion of itself more than anything else, obviously. Gist is your average lace- curtain Irishman visiting Southie may as well be skipping around Belfast in a tutu. A man might get away with that, however, if he can drink like a hun. Might get away with it.

In the early 80s it was all over the elementary school grapevine that a bunch of clowns (as in Barnum & Bailey– wigs, make-up) in a white van were abducting kids off the streets of South Boston. At the time I asked my friend who had just moved from there to verify. He said no fuckin way. Anybody even attempting to go around Southie in a clown suit for any reason would be in a hospital, and definitively not mobile. Comforting from one angle. Understated, the neighborhood watch has always been a motherfucker.

But with the exception of the clown business, and some of Whitey Bulger’s more freakish terrorizing, native violence in Southie isn’t, as a rule, senseless. Even some of the archetypal, brutal, social practices are down at the root virtually indistinguishable from basic knight errantry. Galahad didn’t suffer people talking smack or saying wrong things about his father’s employment history, either. Nobody in of sound mind advocates cracking a man’s jaw against a curb, I’m just saying– Southie’s got heart. And for all its deserved rep, the collective operating philosophy renders out to: work hard and do not act above your station. It’s Boston 101 and it ought to be printed on our money, rather than what is.

Popped in at Touchy’s, early. Pubs in Ireland are less Irish than Touchie’s. Toppling rack of chips behind the bar, racing simulcast. Good. Touchy is in characteristically tentative good spirits. A few pops at L-Street, then one…twothreefourfive at the Quencher, which is how it goes there,though that’s not why it’s one of the best bars on the planet. Careened over to another bar, where we might as well have been, or possibly were, served by means of a funnel. There was a cat looking at me and then I was somewhere else, with different people. As you do.

Among the innumerable reasons that drinking in this neighborhood is enjoyable– the jukeboxes. Haven’t heard note one of any putrid, false- emoting, “Indie,”garbage in days. Thank you, Southie.

Southie jukebox.

New Year’s Eve. The usual. Ben & Jerry’s, Facts of Life marathon, ironing tutu.

Three guys in penguin costumes walk into Dorchester Bay. First penguin says, Aaawwhrrhh! My fahkin’ nuts!

(See video).

Opted for flagrant “70’s” wardrobe thinking, vaguely period appropriate, lightly criminal. Just the kind of tripe you come up with when you’ve been living in Southern California too long getting soft if not outright delusional about weather. Thus, one ends up standing in Government Center at ass o’clock in the morning wearing lethally insufficient vintage bullshit with the buttons on the wrong side against the ripping January wind, preferring death. Lacerating cold is painful to everyone, except the Imperturbable Zamboni [Zach, cameraman]. He’s perfectly comfortable in his infrared-heated exoskeleton, best bespoke, I imagine. Very sporty.

Zamboni

Chump Line

Imperative is deliberate & systematic avoidance of anything resembling a Boston foodie- certified establishment. No white tablecloths, nowhere too far afield for Eddie Coyle to sit and sweat how to pay his plumber. In response, Tony anticipates web-wide outrage. From, evidently, a contingent that wants him to be wasted eating yak testicles in a pit yet are disserved if he’s not regurgitating Zagats, or stumping for the Chamber of Commerce. That’s a different kind of travel show altogether. More like the one with that poolboy-crazed harpy who’s always faux-climaxing at another middling spa and yammering through her daiquiri about other people’s money.

Ten to one at least equally befuddling for the Boston NoRes viewership will be Howie Carr. Apart from his journalistic and subsequently personal connection with the Bulger story, I’ve been a fan of Howie Carr’s show for years, and twice over since I moved to Los Angeles. I can and do listen to Howie’s “Chump Line”—streaming, directly into my cortex— for hours at a stretch. Then I fall to my knees and pray East. Anybody doesn’t understand that, god bless, but I can’t help you.

Already one prick next to me at the hotel’s lobby bar felt obliged to give me his totally unconsidered opinion about Anthony Bourdain appearing on the Howie Carr show. (“A little bird told me.” He said this.) He went on to suggest by means of a kind of formless, nasal bleating that a better choice would have been a certain show on the local NPR station, all the time sipping a Cosmopolitan and failing extravagantly to comprehend how “Muffin Talk” with Binky Housemartin might be off-topic for a show saluting working-class Boston and mournful gun dealers. Naturally he had restaurant suggestions but I told him, thanks we’re just doing Dunkin’ Donuts and Faneuil Hall and anyplace with a full-on salad bar under $20, if he knew any. At which point he had some kind of mental seizure. This life is hard, but it’s wicked hard if you’re stupid.

Up in the WRKO offices, Howie was naturally enthused meeting Tony, but appeared dubious when I told him I was a fan, meanwhile looking like Anthony Bourdain’s personal Quaalude dealer.

Sadistic, the food show.

Once, I unprofitably emptied a BB gun at a rabbit, then, screaming as if I was on fire, chased it across a busy highway, intending– I suppose– to beat the thing to death with butt of the empty BB gun, and then eat it. Derring-do in the skint years, or, to borrow some James Ellroy, joyous shit in the boonies. Follows, as S is fond of remarking, that my relationship to food is attimes like a war grandmother, obsessing over the rations. Plus, I don’t want to be rude, so during the scout I felt compelled to finish everything on my plate, or wax paper, and if I couldn’t, then it comes home to the mini-fridge, already exploding with tripe and misshapen lobster rolls.

I hit capacity days ago. A solid drinking base, which is crucial, but I’ve noticed myself slipping occasionally into little non-reality events I chalk up as metabolic “k-holes”, among other physiological…bailiwicks. Resolved to take an extreme measure: use the hotel gym, first thing, starting tomorrow. Foolishly mentioned this to Sally and Diane. When their peals of laughter subsided enough, I bet them ten dollars each that I’d be on the treadmill watching the little tv, what have you, by the time they got there.

I’ll be taking their twenty dollars directly to Scott at Murphy’s Law. Pretty sure I spaced my tab last night.

ATM at CVS was broken so I had to walk waythehell down Charles to get cash for Sally & Diane. And Scott.

Ran into the crew coming out of CVS, sacs as usual overflowing with chips, and Astro-glide. Todd ran back in for dental dams, since it looks like it might rain.

South Boston Candlepin. God as my witness, I assumed I could still bowl a 180. Minimum.

Nope.

“You want me to rub that on your lens for you?”

Beat Me Up, Buttercup

Didn’t catch what sparked it, just the abrupt, telltale suck of air from a room that’s suddenly
gone to DEFCON 1 at 3 a.m.

The female contingent of the bar magically divided into roughly equal opposing units, soon moved out onto the street, and commenced a mutual verbal assault men would never be able to engage, fictionalize, nor, unfortunately, recount with even remote accuracy. Inside of a minute, screeching tires as an Acura way over capacity with enraged local girls bounds onto the curb. One leaps out before the car stops, wielding a Sox mini-bat.

Southie girls are not like other girls. They prefer oldies, for one.

Murphy’s Law:
Anything that can be drunk, will.

Guinness. Guinness, Jamesons. Guinness, Jamesons. Jamesons, Jamesons, Powers. Powers. Bud Light, Bud Light, Dr. McGillicuddy’s. Dr. McGillicuddy’s, Dr. McGillicuddy’s. Bud Light. Powers. Cuervo. Cuervo? Cuervo Silver. Dr. McGillicuddy’s, Irish car bomb, Jaeger, Jaeger…Goldshlager? Glass of wa—car bomb. Guinness, Kamakaze, Bud Light.

And onto Bar #2. Then #3.

“It Goes Where You Point It”

The whole thing has been threatening to go weird on us from the top, and if it had already I didn’t notice until we got to the Quencher. A chunk of ice hit me in the side of the head, hard, followed by a clicking sound, followed by another iceball, slamming into Tony’s chest. In the shadows, twelve o’clock, a very small being with only eyes peeking out from a snowsuit, aiming a plastic tactical weapon at us. Pee wee black-op. A homemade shield hung on his arm. Iceball, iceball, iceball. Semi-automatic fire– his modification, no doubt. Being phantasmagorically wasted and so processing events in no particular order, I consulted my watch (empty wrist) and thought, he’s out late for a schoolni— iceball to the groin.

Outside a spa on Broadway this afternoon the iceball kid was eating a sandwich on the stoop, in his civvies. It was him— all the Dr. McGillicuddy’s in Southie I won’t forget those eyes. Guy passes on the sidewalk, nods hello, but the kid just chews his sandwich, thousand yard stare. The guy shakes his head. “Hiya doin, Jimmy— you sick fuck.”

by Sally Freeman, Producer

Don’t work with 1970’s Camaros and beware of kids with guns, that’s what our Boston shoot taught me.

The Camaro, is a phenomenal looking car without a doubt, ours was lime green and the owners were game enough to bring it on a trailer to Boston for our homage to Eddie Coyle. The car in Tony’s favorite crime novel-turned-film wasn’t actually a Camaro, but it was the closest muscle car we could get, with a few days notice and snow on the ground.

As on many of our shoots it was FREEZING, real balls-off-a-brass-monkey type temperatures and we were willing the snow to stop.

Driving through Boston, Tony’s at the wheel of the Camaro and we’re filming from a pick up in front. Everything’s great, our camera guys Zach and Todd are singing 70’s funk soundtracks along with the driving shots they’re capturing and the bright green paint job is popping against the grey winter streets.

I think it was the first stop light that the car died at, and after a quick jump start it would sputter and die every time we then asked Tony to drive under 10 miles an hour. Cue Tony revving hard, driving off and leaving us in the dust just to keep it ticking over (and partly I suspect because him and Mike Ruffino were getting into their gangster characters a tad too much).

Todd and Zach are quite a sight bouncing around in the back of the pick-up secured by bungee chords, body harnesses and wearing black ski masks against the cold. When a state trooper asks us to stop and explain what we’re up to, we just keep driving in case the beast breaks down again. He wisely decides we’re too weird to pursue.

Following at least eight more break-down’s, jump starts and some phenomenal cursing – to the delight of the owner’s young son listening to crew chatter over the walkie talkie’s – the Camaro finally gave up the ghost in a windswept car park in Southie. RIP green Camaro.

The gun came into play on the night Tony and Mike went on a pub-crawl of Southie’s bars. They’d already drunk their way through Murphy’s Law and the L Street Tavern before staggering over to the Quencher.

The kid came out of nowhere and the first thing I realize is that Tony’s been shot and the assassin is reloading his gun with ice. He was jamming fist-fulls of it into the side of what looked like a nerf gun and they came out of the other end compacted and scoring direct hits.

He was unperturbed by the presence of a camera and carried on unleashing merry ice hell on Tony and Mike, alternating between crotch and head shots. He had the presence of mind to bring an inflatable shield on this mission with him and was waving it in defiance.

We later learnt that this ice avenger patrols the streets of Southie waiting for drunks to come pouring out of the pubs so he can dole out this stone-cold justice. We all agreed that this child was brilliant and we wish he’d stuck around but instead he slipped off into the night like the lonesome hero he is. Ice boy, we salute you.

Ah, the Brazil show: Completely new and interesting flavors, harrowing plane rides into the stormy jungle, fishing for giant, prehistoric-looking fish… and to think, it almost didn’t happen at all.

Well, sort of.

As the Production Coordinator for No Reservations, I assist – or, “coordinate stuff” for – the crews from pre- through post-production from our offices in Manhattan. Some of it is stuff that is unique to specific shoots, e.g. acquiring Tony’s fishing and ‘coon huntin’ licenses for the Ozarks, or wiring extra cash and sending hourly hurricane updates to the crew in Haiti. However, there are some other things that are pretty routine, like setting up carnets and getting visas.

One thing that is of constant, utmost importance is the status and location of Tony’s passport. I don’t hesitate to say that I might spend nearly as much time with it as he does. This item is key when it is mandatory to acquire things like visas, as they sometimes take weeks to be finalized –a period during which the passport must be left at the appropriate consulate. This can get extra fun (ie, complicated, dicey, eye-twitchingly stressful) when we’re in the middle of a certain 7th season and we’re shooting tons of shows right in a row (all of which require visas!) with as little as three days of down time between shoots. Sometimes certain countries require special shooting permits that can take; weeks or even months to get before you can even THINK about getting a visa. Sometimes Tony travels abroad on trips outside of the show that require his passport. And sometimes all of these things happen at the same time. And shit gets dire. At 2am. During a blizzard. When I have the flu.

This is my first season as a Coordinator on No Reservations, having been bumped up from PA from last season, and all visas and pre-pro materials thus far seemed to effortlessly materialize out of thin air and flutter into my lap. That is, until Brazil. Oh, Brazil. It’s such a long and ridiculous story that you probably wouldn’t believe all of the twists and turns and only-funny-in-retrospect bad luck that came to pass. So, I’ll just keep it short and fast forward to the part where it’s well past midnight on a blizzard-y evening in January, I have a 101 degree fever and am still glued to my office desk trying to sweet talk the internet into not failing me any longer. The following morning would be the last possible day to submit visa applications in order to have everything ready by the time Tony had to leave for his vacation in the Cayman Islands (the Brazil shoot was to head out very shortly after his return.) After months of stressing about my meticulous timing plan, the stakes were high — tons of hard work and money had gone into the show already, and this was the last possible night to make it all happen. So, naturally, throughout the course of the night, the Brazilian Consulate’s website went down (high traffic? maintenance? DON’T KNOW, but you HAVE to submit all applications online), the color printer broke when I tried to print the application photos, all of the 24-hour Kinkos and whatnot types of stores closed down because there was a fucking BLIZZARD happening outside, and then, around 1am, I just happened to peer into Tony’s passport and realize that he had ZERO visa pages left. Ruh roh. It was around this time when I believe the night editors stopped teasing me about still being at work so late, and started actually being afraid of me as I stress-ate M&Ms and face-planted into a pile of post-its on my desk at devastating speeds. I’d been working since a 7am trip to the consulate that morning, and the angry, murderous flu virus taking over my body wasn’t helping. After weeks of damage control, was this really it? Was Brazil dunzo? Was I going to have to greet the bosses in the morning and tell them that all the money spent on this show is basically festering in the proverbial shitter because of VISAS?

Nah. But oh, the horrible, unspeakable things we did to make it happen… just kidding. I think. It’s a bit of a blur. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will tell you that Nicola, our Unit Manager and I, concocted a plan that involved my getting a total of seven hours of sleep in a span of 72 hours, and putting our brand new PA, Greg, on a plane to the Cayman Islands to take care of some passport stuff — a trip that literally involved about three hours in the airport before flying right back to New York. I don’t think he even got to go outside. Livin’ the dream! Sorry, Greg. But, hey! The shoot was nothin’ but smooth sailin’ after that, what with Tony’s back injury, mysterious crew illnesses and delirium, treacherous weather conditions and approximately ten billion hours of flight delays on the way back to the States. Part of me would like to be bitter, but the show just came out so damn well that it’s not really possible. In all honesty, I have a blast doing what I do to help get this show into your TV box, and I think you’ll all agree when you watch tonight’s episode that all of the stress, hard work and future therapy was (and will be) totally worth it (as will finally getting Tony a second valid passport.) Enjoy!

Our shoot in the Ozarks is one that will stay with me for a long time. For reasons good and not so good.

I’m not talking about the stark beauty of the landscape or the incredibly warm welcome from the Ozarkians. I’m talking about two unique incidents that I’ve never experienced before and probably (hopefully) never will again.

The first involved a raccoon. This particular one had been shot the night before and left outside in sub zero temperatures. A combination of rigor mortis and the fact that it was frozen solid made this a very hard raccoon to skin, and this is what I needed to film.

So whilst the rest of the crew was off at the next location, I found myself in a garage with three jovial hunters and a frozen coon carcass. They tried their best, and at one point all of them had feet firmly planted in the ground and were pulling the frozen skin off of the frozen body in a violent taxidermy three-way.

Once this was achieved they started to remove a special part of the animal which they wanted to present to Tony at dinner. They called it a “toothpick”, they meant the penis.

Marty cut through something in the undercarriage of the unfortunate coon and unleashed a torrent of very cold urine towards me. I was getting a low shot at the time and my boots and camera got more than a little back-splash. The three guys were laughing their heads off, this was their only direct and very deliberate shot of our raccoon hunt.

The other incident involved a very talented and world famous writer who was taking Tony night fishing. Daniel Woodrell, a West Plains native took us to meet a team of fishermen well versed in “gigging for suckers”.

With the benefit of hindsight, a frozen, fast running river, at night in the middle of nowhere is probably not the place to be with a valuable literary talent, and Tony.

I was in the boat filming at the moment of the accident. The sound and force with which Daniel hit the deck was chilling and terrifying. I felt physically sick, I was convinced he’d broken his neck.

I think its testament to the spirit of the area, that within 10 minutes Daniel was sitting in front of a fire cracking jokes and drinking bourbon from the bottle.

The Ozarks will always inspire within me feelings of terror, hilarity, warmth and awe.

I can’t wait to go back.

Vienna, 2010.

Cold, dark and snowy…just like home, just like Berlin, except it´s not.  It´s another other German speaking country…AUSTRIA!  The land of Tafelspitz, Kaiserschmarrn and all things tasty.

The kids from ABNR have summoned our help to fix the Vienna, Austria shoot.  When I say our help, I mean the new team…..Stefan Zanev, you may remember him as the Location Producer/ Fixer from such fabulous episodes as the BERLIN SHOW, and our 4 month old son Gabriel, whom you probably have not yet met.  I assure you he´s an excellent traveller with already quite a few passport stamps.

We meet up with the crew in Vienna to fix and location coordinate the shoot. This time I am on the other side of things. I am not carrying a camera or a lighting kit, this time I´m holding a baby and Stefan is doing most of  the location work.  And It´s weird, seeing the crew all together, setting up lights, doing the shoot rundown, mikeing all the characters on set…..and well I´m not really part of it. I mean sure there´s the location contacts, the paperwork, coordinating people and vehicles, but Stefan, an excellent Producer, has just about all of it covered.  So when I pop by on the first night to see what the kids are up to, Tony immediately drags Stefan and I into the scene. Here we go again. I hate being on camera, it´s like asking me to put on a Big Bird costume and then asking me to  “act“ normal. I come off like a freak show, only way less intelligent.  But that´s what the boss asks, so off we go.

Next thing I know, we are miked up and shoved heaping portions of Austrian Beisl food before us.  This beisl, or small diner-like greasy spoon is called Wratschko.  And it´s really good, despite the reputation that beisls can be questionable. I get a goose leg and a bunch of greens and Tony has been served a hefty helping of the “old Brain and scrambled egg”combo.  I basically dig in and try and save myself from having to talk, but as usual I am dragged in by Tony to the conversation………..and then it leads to this……..a little piece of advice from Herr Bourdain, bet you hadn´t thought of this one before.

As we all know, Tony likes  his Pig…or Schwein in these parts.  But did you know he also likes to fry his bacon naked. Or at least he has the wisdom and experience to know that these kind of casual Saturday morning breakfasts can lead to disaster and mayhem. Apparently such carelessness can lead to fried b*lls, which is another delicacy, but one probably better suited for other TV hosts.  So, just goes to show you, you learn something new on every shoot. And by the way, if you need a hot dog with molten hot cheese in the middle and a can of beer in Austria, you just have to say (In German, not English), “Give me a puss stick and a tin can”.  Always follow the locals.

Every shoot we do for the show has its own set of challenges — if we’re not shaming ourselves by being behind schedule in Japan, then we’re baring the frigid cold in an all-day outdoor shoot, trying to capture Tony in a ’74 Camaro (Boston), or sweltering in blistering heat (India).

In between the tough times, there are those fabulous, special (yet often simple) moments. One of those was in Nicaragua. We’d just finished a shoot on the outskirts of Esteli, and were offering a ride to a mother and her two small children back into the city. Rather than be cramped inside our van and truck, producer Sally suggested that she and I ride in the back of the Hilux pickup truck.

We climbed in, and sorted some reasonably comfortable space for ourselves amongst our luggage. As the truck drove along the Pan-American highway, we found ourselves giggling like schoolgirls as the wind whipped through our hair — the road was bumpy, but the night was warm, clear and starry. It had been years since I’d ridden in a convertible, and riding through the night air in this way was exhilarating. Things only got better when we realized that we had a cooler in the back with us, stocked with the local Toña beer. Una cerveza, por favor!

The ride to the hotel went all too quickly, and after posing for photos looking like a couple of redneck truckers, it was time to get back to work.

Please note:  There are no actors in the video you are about to see.  The looks of sheer terror on our faces are real.

Only three days in, the cholera outbreak, the heat, the hostility towards the camera, and the overall lack of infrastructure has made this shoot one of the hardest on record.  This country had just gone through a devastating earthquake that killed over 300,000 people and left over a million homeless and now an epic storm is expected to touch down.  As the rain started to descend and the giant orange and red vortex on the satellite feed came closer and closer to Port-au-Prince, we thought it was time to have that inevitable “worst case scenerio” talk.  Our intrepid security team, Rhidian and Rob, sits Tom, myself and Todd (filming) down to discuss some events that could very well occur in the next few hours if Hurricane Tomas hits Haiti’s capital.

Anthonybourdain:

Q: So, Helen, where does one hire a crackhead rodeo clown?
Well Tony, I could tell you but then I would have to kill you, so let’s just say that we have many multi-talented ZPZ employees here…

Q And I’m wondering..cause I’ve seen people asking on the site: When DO the new episodes start airing? Nobody tells me nothing.
Tentatively, new episodes start airing February 28, 2011, Mondays at 9p.

Q: I just love my adorable Russian sidekick, Zamir. When’s he going to be back on the show?  Did we close a deal for Cuba with him? Or is his agent asking too much money?
Zamir will somehow always find a place on No Reservations…whether it’s randomly popping up at the office insisting that he has some “goodies” for you or suspiciously demanding some tapes that he supposedly owns. Word on the street is that he most likely will somehow slip his way into a No Res episode soon, Cuba or not, as he somehow always manages to do…

Q: What do you think is up with that guy’s haircut on Ghost Hunters? Is that America’s Most Haunted Faux-Hawk or what?
Is it Ghost Hunters? Or Ghost Adventures?  Or Ghost Whisperers? Either way, I’m not trying to fuck with some dude who talks to dead people…

Q: Given the unlovely personal habits, mental health histories and criminal pasts of most of them, which member of the ZPZ staff would be most worrisome to be marooned with on a desert island?
Tough question…I would be worried to be on an island with just about any ZPZ staff member but the most worrisome of all would have to be the infamous Diane Schutz. As seen in such episodes as Making of India, Diane is notorious for being the first to swoop in for the kill when good food is on the table.  And in desperate times on the island, I can just imagine…”oh hey Helen, are you gonna eat that coconut?”….”how does that palm tree sap taste?”….”so…what kind of fish you got there?…”.  But then again, I worship the woman – she is the queen of swag and snacks. And if there’s anyone who could magically make some famous chef appear to cook us up some grub, it’s Diane. And right when the waters would run low with fish and we’re on the brink of starvation, she would somehow land us reservations at some invisible secret restaurant on the island that she’s made previous arrangements with to appear out of thin air, perfectly in time with a comp’d meal of course….and plus, she’s also got the Mary Poppins bag of infinite snacks.

Q:  Could I have a complete and comprehensive list of WHERE we’re going to do shows this season? Me and Chris were swacked when we wrote it and now I like totally forget.
The season 7 lineup (of course, subject to change, as always) :
701 Nicaragua
702 Cambodia
703 Haiti
704 Vienna
705 Ozarks
706 Boston
707 Brazil
708 Japan
709 Cuba
710 Macau
711 El Bulli
712 US Desert
713 Congo
714 Yemen
715 Memphis

Who is Helen Cho?

I am a proud New Yorker, Korean-American, and the now resident blogger/twitterer/facebooker for Zero Point Zero Production, Inc. [the company that produces No Reservations]. I can often be found scheming with coworkers and planting ideas in the minds of Chris, Lydia and Joe [the principals of ZPZ] with things for the office like slides, siesta rooms, full bars, and tree stands outfitted with Nerf guns. When I’m not at the office, I enjoy fishing, freezing while watching Pat LaFrieda butcher meats, and a good taco.

But a bit about my history at ZPZ: way back when, I applied for an internship at ZPZ but my ‘strangeness’ (or genius, depending on how you look at it) landed me a PA gig instead. (This was at a time when Tony was indeed looking to include a crackhead rodeo clown and dead prostitutes in the show, as he mentions…) So like most debt-drowned college grads do, I started at the bottom of the production totem pole but quickly managed to hustle my way around different positions from PA to Production Coordinator to Associate Producer to Unit Manager.  And now?…This — I was recently asked to take on the behind-the-scenes voice for No Reservations and the fans and viewers’ direct link to Tony and crew, and I couldn’t be more excited as there’s plenty ridiculousness and fun that never makes it to the screen or even to the network, for that matter, that I can’t wait to share with you all….

Follow us on twitter and facebook:

Tony – @NoReservations
Helen – @IntoNoRes

Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/AnthonyBourdainNoReservations