Anthony Bourdain Gets Revenge With Jiro!

Get Jiro's about a sort of dystopic future ruled by chefs,

an elitist near future in something

that sure resembles Los Angeles,

where warring gangs of chefs slaughter each other

over seemingly inconsequential points of culinary minutia.

You know, to serve tomatoes out of season

migh be a death sentence.

Our hero is an old school, Edo style, traditional sushi chef

who's very good with a knife

who really, really doesn't like it if you abuse his sushi.

This is also a world

where decapitating a rude customer would be considered

completely understandable and acceptable.

So in a lot of ways, it's an expression

of both my worst fears and darkest secret wishes.

In the early sixties, I was a comics nerd and enthusiast,

a wanna-be comic writer and illustrator,

particularly after I saw the first West Coast Undergrounds.

A few years ago, I got to work

on a little project with Harvey Pekar

and it was deeply satisfying, so, yeah,

this is an overgrown little boy's dream come true.

I've been friends with Joel for many, many years.

He's had previous experience editing comic books

and graphic novels, A History of Violence being one of them,

and it was just something

we had talked about doing for a long time.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could work together,

and wouldn't it be even cooler

if we could do a graphic novel.

You know, on one hand, Get Jiro lampoons and satirizes

the sort of worst of foodie excesses

and the most ludicrous aspects of an industry

and an attitude that I very much benefit from

and am guilty of.

But on the other hand,

as somebody who was a chef of 30 years,

I well know the inner pain when you work hard,

bring to bear years of training,

try to make something beautiful that you love

and people coolly abuse or misunderstand it.

[Techno Music]