Morgan Fallon — 10 Years on the Road with Anthony Bourdain, High Standards, and More

Morgan Fallon recounts his unlikely path from a denied Emerson College applicant who drove to admissions to demand a spot, through three intense years assisting director Michael Mann on Ali, into documentary television. He details how he broke into Anthony Bourdain's world, the craft of two-camera vérité shooting (the 180-degree rule and the wordless 'dance' between operators), and what made Bourdain's relentlessly high standards both brutal and beloved. He reflects candidly on his own bipolar disorder and anxiety, quitting drinking after Bourdain's death, and the physical toll of being a 'physical shooter.' The conversation closes with deeply personal stories: returning to West Virginia to make peace with a hard childhood, working alongside his wife Jillian, and a transcendent day filming in Antarctica he calls the peak of his career.

• Fallon quit drinking and took up mountain biking immediately after Anthony Bourdain died.
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• He landed his break with Michael Mann via a random 3-day office-assistant gig, refused to leave, and within months was in Africa shooting on Ali.
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• Mann's assistant left Fallon alone with Mann to attend a Roger Waters concert; Fallon delivered a David Remnick book quote on demand and took the assistant's job within about a week.
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• Around 2014 Fallon pushed to direct, proved himself on Mind of a Chef in Sweden, and got Bourdain's blessing to direct the Ethiopia episode with Marcus Samuelsson.
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• Fallon explains the famous Sicily octopus scene: a diver planted a dead octopus underwater, devastating Bourdain, who downed six negronis before turning it into an iconic scene.
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• Fallon describes a daily Parts Unknown rhythm of drinking to sleep, then powering through on coffee and adrenaline before drinking again.
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• Fallon pitched the West Virginia (McDowell County) episode in Antarctica; the show won an Emmy, which he sent back to the town of Welch where it now sits in someone's home.
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• On the last day of shooting a never-aired Florence episode a week before he died, Bourdain told Fallon's wife Jillian he'd just signed three more years and wanted to keep working with them.
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• Fallon blew out his knee running sprints with a camera while filming a 2003 documentary on Coastal Carolina's football team, then shot two more months before getting surgery.
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• The bio: nine-time Emmy-nominated, studied film at Emerson College, worked for Michael Mann, joined ZPZ in 2007, and shot Parts Unknown across its 103-episode run.
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• On the Ali shoot in Mozambique, Mann directed a night scene with about 15,000 extras.
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• Fallon met Steve Rinella in a Michigan parking lot and was up to his shoulders in a swamp setting turtle traps within 35 minutes; their canceled show Wild Within evolved into MeatEater.
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• Fallon shot 96 episodes of The Biggest Loser over three years, a camera on his shoulder ~10 hours a day, which taught him endurance shooting.
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• Bourdain, who ate almost anything, couldn't stomach Ethiopian food and nearly starved on the shoot; Fallon begged him to eat Cliff Bars.
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• Parts Unknown shot 7-day field segments on roughly a $3,000 external equipment rental budget yet earned cinematography nominations, one against Free Solo.
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• For the Tangier episode they filmed Bourdain typing; his freestyle text mixed 'It was the best of times,' 'Call me Ishmael,' and 'Jackie Brown.'
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• The Washington Square Park scene with Grandmaster Maurice Ashley demolishing a street hustler has about 9 million views on Ashley's YouTube channel.
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• In Antarctica the crew flew their own C-130 and a helicopter, drank whiskey over 50,000-year-old ice, and ate pulled pork sandwiches over a drum of jet fuel at a remote refueling station.
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