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Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown
Hawaii. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired June 14, 2015 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(MUSIC)
[21:00:16] PAUL THEROUX, NOVELIST, ESSAYIST, TRAVEL WRITER & HAWAII RESIDENT: My great fear as a kid was the fear of failing. And that's Hawaiian because I was born that way because that's expectation. You're Hawaiian, you're going to be less. You're Hawaiian, you're going to feel more. And so it's old. It's in you. It's part of your identity.
But when I navigate a voyage, I know when the storm comes and it's going to take you to the bone. And if the storm keeps coming, you've got to stand up. That's just what you've got to do. And it's this zone where you learn to make fear your best friend. You hold it really close to you and you open up the door to believing that you can make it.
(SINGING)
ANTHONY BOURDAIN, CNN HOST (voice-over): Hawaii is America, as American as anything could possibly be, yet it also never shed what was there before in the layers and layers that have come since. It's a wonderful, tricky, conflicted, mutant hell rod (ph), and what, for lack of a better word, you'd have to call paradise.
THEROUX: No man's paradise. Paradises don't exist. Paradise is kind of in your head.
BOURDAIN (on camera): Wait a minute. You look at your window here. You look at those hills, those mountains, all that green, that blue sky, the gen-clear sea, it sure looks like paradise to me.
(voice-over): This guy knows. He's been everywhere. He's Paul Theroux, novelist, essaying and legendary travel writer. Of the all the places he's been, all the places he's seen, he chose Hawaii to live, and he's lived here for 25 years.
(on camera): Does it matter that it's America?
THEROUX: It's the big thing that it's America. It has elements of the third world. The nicest elements of the third world, which is the self-respect, the pride. There's things that don't work at all. And then it's mainstream USA. Where we are now, I mean, there's PTA meetings here. They get together and watch the Super Bowl and it's the most Main Street USA as much as you will find.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Town is a neighborhood spot in Honolulu's Kamokada (ph) district and as Hawaii is the only state in the union that allows day boat fishermen to sell to restaurants, the pan-roasted mahi-mahi is pretty damn good.
(on camera): It's not a particularly welcoming or friendly part of the world. Contrary to the sort of the aloha myth.
THEROUX: No, that's right. That's right. But no island is. Nantucket isn't. The island of Hawaii isn't. The Isle of Wight. Name an island that wa, want foreigners there? Sicily. They want foreigners there? No way. Did anyone come to an island with a good intention?
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: No, never in this new world. Best case in the world, bring syphilis.
THEROUX: Yeah. Yeah.
BOURDAIN: Pretty much. I mean, at the very least.
THEROUX: Yes. Captain Cook put his sailors ashore, just to look northwest of here. He was the first hali (ph). Like Magellan. Hawaii killed its first tourists. The Philippines killed their first tourist. But people on the islands born on the islands view anyone who comes ashore with suspicion.
To go back to what defines a Hawaiian, maybe we should go back in our imaginations, it could have been 2,000 years ago. The Tahitians had this voyage way before any other culture was exploring the deep seas. Somehow, yet, someplace in the South Pacific, the single most isolated archipelago in the planet. Fast forward to Captain Cook and his identification of a native Hawaiian, you get a glimpse that these are very productive people. They're industrious, healthy, strong. They had time for the arts. That was a large population, more than half of what we have in Hawaii today. Fully sustainable, because there was no other choice. So over time, the native Hawaiian population goes to 22,000. It's the same story. Introduced disease, the inability to deal with it, people die. 1926, the public school system would outlaw language and the practice of culture in public schools. So the road to extinction is being well paved.
[21:05:44] BOURDAIN (voice-over): Between Captain Cook's arrival in 1778 and today, disease wiped out most of the population. Missionaries came. A booming sugar and pineapple plantation industry. An influx of immigrants from Japan, Okinawa, China and the Philippines. There was the overthrow of Queen Liluokalani. And the U.S. takeover of the Hawaiian government. World War II. And finally, statehood.
The geographical realities of being thousands of miles from, well, anywhere else, has given Hawaii, to some degree, protection from the forces that eradicated so many other South Pacific cultures entirely. In fact, they've arguably been holding back the inevitable creed better than just about anyone.
What Hawaii looks like today depends on which island you're standing on and, to some extent, the reputation of the locals.
The Hawaiian Islands are not a monolith. Islands, that's plural, and we're talking eight very different islands with very different identities.
It's been over a century since the waves of immigrants began and things got all mixed up in the best possible way. There's layers. And a simple question like, who is Hawaiian, gets you all kinds of answers.
The neighborhood of Kalihi is far cry from the Hawaii that most people know. And Ethel's have been a go-to of a very specific kind the last 40 years.
ANDREW LE, CHEF, THE PIG AND THE LADY: It's the blue collar town. They all come here. Breakfast, lunch. Every day.
BOURDAIN: I'm joined by two local chefs, Mark Naguchi, of Mission, known by some as the Gooch. His second generation Japanese. And Andrew Le, of the Pig and the Lady. He's first generation Vietnamese American, or would that be Vietnamese-Hawaiian? As you'll see, it gets complicated.
MARK NAGUCHI, CHEF, THE MISSION: I actually cooked on the east coast for three years and people would always be like, are you from Hawaii? You're Hawaiian? I said, no, I'm second-generation Japanese. They're like, if you're from Hawaii, that makes you Hawaiian. I was like, no. What I realized like, here in Hawaii, we identify ourselves ethnically versus geographically. There's no way we would call ourselves Hawaiians. We would get our asses kicked by a Hawaiian.
BOURDAIN: How many generations does it take: I mean who qualifies as Hawaiian in your view?
NAGUCHI: To me, a Hawaiian is a native of the land. It's in your blood. You come from a lineage of native Hawaiian people.
BOURDAIN: What's your feeling here?
LE: I do feel like I'm Hawaiian in a sense, you know. It's my place. But culturally, that's a different story.
BOURDAIN: Let me ask you this. You say you're not Hawaiian.
NAGUCHI: No.
What's your feeling about Spam?
NAGUCHI: I love Spam
BOURDAIN: So you're Hawaiian.
NAGUCHI: I'm from Hawaii.
(LAUGHTER)
I'm born and raised, going to die 808.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): The owners of Ethel's are sort of a typical Hawaiian mix, Okinawan, Yoko Shee (ph), aka mom; mainland Japanese husband, Yoichi (ph); and daughter, Anoka (ph), who I guess would be Japanese/Okinawan/American/Hawaiian; and son-in-law, Robert, who is, of course, Mexican.
(on camera): That's pretty. Ooh, wow, look at that.
NAGUCHI: That looks good.
BOURDAIN: Now we are talking. That's awesome.
LE: I just call it local food. Local food covers like a wide spread. When I look at this table, it's just Hawaii. Got Portuguese, Japanese. Okinawan, World War II. I don't know.
BOURDAIN: Korea?
LE: Korean, Japanese, Hawaiian. Awesomeness.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): The food is bone-deep Hawaiian food, my friend, which is to say delicious mash-up, of -- well, look, take taco rice. It's a dish created in Okinawa to approximate Tex-Mex for homesick American G.I.'s that appropriated in a post-ironic way by younger generations of Okinawans and Japanese and it's now found its way back to Hawaii. Got that?
(LAUGHTER)
[21:10:10] LE: Identifying and seeing my best friends who were native Hawaiian, helped me to realize the pride of being from Hawaii, understanding the Hawaiian culture. Living it. Possibly being part of Japanese.
BOURDAIN: There's still a movement to a sovereign --
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: There's strong movement. So if fighting broke out, which side are you on?
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: You don't have to think about that.
NAGUCHI: I would joke about it. If like, me and Hawaii. I am back and Uncle Sam and were like, no, no native Hawaiian only, I'm like, everybody needs to cook. I'm a cook.
(LAUGHTER)
I have worth!
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BOURDAIN (voice-over): This is Ninoa Thompson. In 1976, along with a number of similarly heroic Hawaiians, he did a very difficult, very important thing. Before 1972, it was generally assumed, even insisted upon, that Hawaii had been settled originally by some random savages who maybe drifted over accidentally from South America. It certainly couldn't have been ancient Polynesians. They couldn't possible have been the kind of sophisticated navigators who could guide a sailboat willfully across the Pacific, across thousands of miles of open water.
NINOA THOMPSON, HAWAII: Nobody could see the canoe. No dreams. No hope. Can't see.
BOURDAIN: The Polynesian Voyaging Society, with the help of crew members like Ninoa Thompson, set out to prove that's what did happen.
THOMPSON: There were those in the community that loved this, prayed for the canoe. Because they sensed the change. You have this 62- foot, 12-ton voyaging canoe. It was powerful. It changed everything.
[21:15:12] BOURDAIN: The hokulaia, a double-hulled sailing canoe, a replica of the kind of craft believed to have been used in those times, and only using primitive contemporaneous navigational tools, sailed to 5,500 miles to Tahiti and back. The trip that helped spark a Hawaiian renaissance, a rebirth of pride and interest in traditional Hawaiian culture and identity.
THOMPSON: The success was monumental. It changed the view of ancestors as extraordinarily skilled and so we come from them.
BOURDAIN: Thomas is a waterman who continues to sail on hokulaia's missions. Native Hawaiian, his roots go back in the valley 200 years.
THOMPSON: My grandfather was born here. So I grew up.
BOURDAIN: He spent many years learning traditional Polynesian navigation techniques from a master, now the small Micronesian island.
THOMPSON: This was a man who was chosen by his grandfather. At one year old, he was put in to be trained and learning the wind and the water and the zone, he was sailing. He would never say it was some sense of abuse, but, yeah, when the way make the canoe move, the canoe make me sick, my grandfather threw me into the ocean so I could inside the wave. When I go inside the wave, I become the wave. When I become the wave, now I navigate it. So when I approached him. Said to me, too old. You want someone to know everything, send his son to my island. But he said I'll teach you enough to find the island you seek, but I can't teach you the magic.
BOURDAIN (on camera): Why do you think it was important to do such a difficult thing?
THOMPSON: The same story you'll see everywhere in terms of the indigenous people. My father's mother, nearly pure Hawaiian, chooses not to teach her children language or culture or genealogy. Where do you come? Who's your family? What's your name? And that could have been 100 generations. What the voyage did was a reconnection back to feeling wholesome about who you are, because knowing where you come from and who are your ancestors. So when I got to Tahiti, it was their commitment. I wasn't our commitment. It was theirs. It started to ignite this flame. It was symbolic. A bumper sticker, a T-shirt emerges, I'm proud to be Hawaiian. 1987, it becomes the first language. It's mandatory in schools. Hawaiian culture has to be taught in private schools. Private schools won't have attendance if you don't teach Hawaiian. Now it's Hawaiian identity is into everything. It has to be recognized in everything. That is powerful.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): When I mentioned to people, locals in Oahu, Maui, other Hawaiian residents that I was going to Molikai, the response was almost always surprise. Molikai did not have a reputation for being welcome, that it was dangerous to go over there. That those Molikai dudes were mean, inward-looking, unfriendly, tough as iron and quick to get pissed off. As it turned out, that was not my experience.
WALTER NAKI, FISHERMAN: So we like to brag that we don't have. We don't have traffic lights. We don't have a building over three stories. We don't have traffic.
BOURDAIN (on camera): Nice.
(voice-over): Walter Naki is a skilled fisherman and, today, we're headed out for some octopus.
NAKI: Molikai, it's the friendly island.
BOURDAIN (on camera): But it's famously not the friendly island. It's supposed to be the most unfriendly island. I mean, that's what everybody says, right?
NAKI: It depends on how you look at it. Traditionally, we're here very friendly. Now, unfriendly is where you go try to come and fix it. That's when it becomes unfriendly.
(LAUGHTER)
The Molikai before have been -- so we had a lot still in tact.
BOURDAIN: Still?
NAKI: Yes. But there's always other people that want to come.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Unsurprisingly, fishing rights is an issue around here. Don't come over here sport fishing the wrong place if you know what's good for you.
[21:20:00] NAKI: So this is the area. Nice sandy spot. OK, ready? Let's go.
OK, we are here, man.
(INAUDIBLE). We keep the feeling there, make them feel, not going to take no more. When he comes right up, stick him. BOURDAIN (voice-over): Final step, stun the struggling creature with
a sharp blow from a mallet or, if you want to go old school, bite them right in the brain. In my case, it took repeated crunching to locate the apparently Chicklet-sized organ.
NAKI: It's going to come to you.
BOURDAIN: This one died eventually, likely by exhaustion, as anything else, I suspected.
(LAUGHTER)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:25:04] BOURDAIN (voice-over): While the sailing canoe the hokulaia was a powerful spark for the Hawaiian renaissance, this is what really set things off. Beginning in 1941, continuing into the '70s and beyond, the U.S. Navy had been using the beautiful neighborhood island of Kaloa as a bombing range. You could feel the shockwaves as far away as Maui and Molikai.
WALTER RITTE, ACTIVIST: -- Hawaii and nobody's going to tell me any different.
BOURDAIN: People had never been happy about it. But emboldened by times and recent events, a group of young activists decided to take a stand. In 1976, there were a number of attempted occupations of the island in protest of the bombing. None more successful than Walter Ritte's. He and fellow activist, Richard Sawyer, sat on the island and refused to leave.
RITTE: One thing, back over there.
BOURDAIN: Managing to evade pursuers for just over a month before finally being arrested in jail.
RITTE: The first to burn down this building and put up (INAUDIBLE).
BOURDAIN: They emerged, of course, heroes. And these protests went on to inspire many others to join the movement.
RITTE: I hope I'm still alive when that day happens. Because I want to see our queen back in office.
BOURDAIN: And embodied the independent spirit, the desire for Hawaiian empowerment and sovereignty that today resonates across generations.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
BOURDAIN: Welcome to what is supposedly the most unwelcoming place in Hawaii.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
HANUHANU: Come in. come in. My name is Hanuhanu. BOURDAIN: Thank you so much.
HANUHANU: Nice to meet you.
BOURDAIN: Thank you.
HANUHANU: Please come inside.
BOURDAIN: Aloha.
This is Kahobnui (ph) fish pond, a shared community space with a sacred history. Hanuhanu is the caretaker of the fish pond. He's a local community leader here on Molikai. Also here is the famous Walter Ritte.
RITTE: Everyone knows how valuable this is because we can see what happened to the rest of the island.
BOURDAIN (on camera): Essentially an old school fish farm.
HANUHANU: 800 years old.
BOURDAIN: 800 years old.
HANUHANU: Modernizing one old idea and an ancient idea simple as feeding your community. This, the island you're on, this place could feed over a million people back in the day.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): You hear the word again and again on Molikai. Ina, which means land and translates to that which feeds you. Springs, mountains, rivers. These lands, these fish ponds were managed by their ancestors as a sacred trust. Here where fresh water from the mountains and fast-moving oceans waters met, early, sustainable clean fish farms. Something in modern times we're still struggling to figure out.
RITTE: People think about us. The true story is that we have a place of abundance and trying to protect it. Trying to protect all of these things we've been trying to protect for the last 30 years and it's getting harder and harder.
HANUHANU: Every single one of these Hawaiians over here, get enough evidence that the state of Hawaii, the Department of Land and Natural Resources have done a terrible job. We're not even looking for blame. We're looking for an agreement for today.
BOURDAIN (on camera): Right.
HANUHANU: We all are going to be pono. We're all going to be righteous and good. Our planet is in such bad shape that being environmental, being green is trending. That's how Hawaiians have always been.
BOURDAIN: Who gets to be Hawaiian? Is it the question, who is Hawaiian? HANUHANU: Hawaiian is a nationality. You can be Hawaiian.
BOURDAIN: Really, come on.
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: Don't shit me now. I have to be born here.
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: Come on. This is a different story.
HANUHANU: I can give you the best explanation. You cannot be our blood. Our blood is kanapa. You cannot be kanapa. Hawaii is our nationality. You can be that.
You see this what we're standing on, our ina, it matters so much that if you love this place and you don't want to develop it, destroy it, abuse it, we're on the same team. If you, eye this place as a money- making vehicle for yourself, we enemies. Right? And it doesn't matter what race, religion, what sex.
[21:30:00] HANUHANU: If you love this place and the way we love it and our ancestors loved it, oh, we can be more than friends but we can be family. I'm going to aloha you.
(LAUGHTER)
BOURDAIN: Beautifully put. Wow.
HANUHANU: That's it.
BOURDAIN: Right on, bro.
(LAUGHTER)
BOURDAIN (voice-over): It's a pretty impressive spread of food for such a supposedly surly group. Slow roasted pig, grilled kala fish, mullet cooked lavala (ph) style. And of course, octopus, known as squid luau. Fresh poi. You've got to have it fresh. Believe me. Makes all the
difference in the world. Fresh water snails called, I believe, hivine (ph) harvested from streams way up in the mountains.
HANUHANU: Up in the mountain. Squid.
BOURDAIN (on camera): That's octopus? Oh.
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: I recognize you.
(SINGING)
HANUHANU: When somebody steals this, it's easy for us to say, you're stealing our stuff. Right? But all of this stuff is dependent on what healthy environment and eco-system.
BOURDAIN: Let me ask you just, because I'm a bit of a dick, I have to ask.
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
BOURDAIN: I have to ask. All right. So we have like 12 more beers. And I pull out some nice masubi (ph).
(SINGING)
HANUHANU: I would eat them. Look, I would eat them.
(LAUGHTER)
That doesn't mean it's what I feed my children.
(LAUGHER)
Our culture made everything we did the best of the best. Hawaiians are the only ones that turned taro root into poi. We're doing everything. The best of the best. You introduce Span to us, we're doing our best. You introduced Christianity to us, we're going to do the best.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: Our Christianity is better than yours. I love it.
(LAUGHTER)
BOURDAIN: So disappointed, no way lived up to your reputation, mean, inward-looking, hostile. Admit it. It's a calculated strategy.
HANUHANU: It is.
BOURDAIN: And leave the message, if you're watching this show, I hope your heart is swelling with admiration. The bottom line, don't come here.
HANUHANU: Yeah!
(LAUGHTER)
(SINGING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:35:] BOURDAIN (voice-over): The ocean is all around for thousands of miles. A humbling feeling knowing, at all times, the ground upon which you live and breathe is but a tiny speck in the middle of all this. So in Hawaii, the water man, is an important distinct. It expresses
the shared consensus you're able to handle yourself in the ocean no matter what it throws at you. It implies you're capable of almost mythical things. The ability to live in the water, handle it's many moods above or below the surface.
Meet Uncle Ross, waterman, a canoe-surfing legend and generally accepted ambassador of the aloha spirit. He's offered to share with me the truly ancient Hawaiian space found only on the face of a crashing wave.
Surfing, a life connected to the ocean, just spending time with family and friends on the beach, some of the cornerstones of Hawaiian life.
UNCLE ROSS, WATERMAN, CANOE SURFER: This is our chef. This is Jason
BOURDAIN (on camera): Hi.
UNCLE ROSS: Tony, that's Kiola.
BOURDAIN: How are you?
(CROSSTALK)
UNCLE ROSS: Loni.
BOURDAIN: How do you do. How are you?
UNCLE ROSS: Kiave.
BOURDAIN: Hi.
UNCLE ROSS: Megan (ph).
BOURDAIN: Hello.
UNCLE ROSS: Those are my two daughters. This is my wife, Felicia.
BOURDAIN: Hello, how are you?
UNCLE ROSS: Brendan, come say hi.
BOURDAIN: Hey, Brendan, how are you.
UNCLE ROSS: Milton. This is Milton.
BOURDAIN: Milton, good to meet you.
How does everybody know each other here?
UNCLE ROSS: We live on an island. Everybody knows everybody.
BOURDAIN: OK. Why do I even ask?
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think I met Uncle Ross through the water. Surfing, we became like family. He's like my dad. My ohana.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Each and every weekend, Ross can be found here, with his ohana, a Hawaiian word that describes an extended circle of family and close friends.
(on camera): Nice. Got lucky today. It's a beautiful day.
UNCLE ROSS: Beautiful day.
Even when it's storming, it's nice on the beach.
BOURDAIN: Yeah.
UNCLE ROSS: And we'll stay here until that thing goes down, hits the horizon.
(LAUGHTER)
When the sun hits the horizon, it's time to go home.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Maui is an island as beautiful as it gets and, sure, it's got share of portion-controlled cruise line entertainments doled out and digestible bites and complementary Mai Tais, but you'll also find a sort of beloved institution like Tasty Crust, as local a place as you're likely to find.
Daniel Akitahito will explain.
DANIEL AKITAHITO, JOURNALIST & FOUNDER, CONTRAST MAGAZINE: This is a situation I can order for you and you trust me. I think we'll hook you up with the local flavor.
BOURDAIN (on camera): OK, I trust.
(voice-over): Raised on the big island, he's a journalist, the first Hawaiian editor of a major surf publication and founder of the local "Contrast" magazine.
[21:40:00] AKITAHITO: Local culture is very much so trying to point a finger at anybody coming going, hey, you don't belong. Therein kind of lies a little conflict we have of being a modern-day Hawaiian. And I still think that's something that we forget about these days is how educated and how accepting our ancestors were. It was always built on inclusivity, aloha. Aloha is giving without expecting anything in return. You've got this Hawaiian culture that was a product of the Polynesians that populated the islands and then you have this local that's a product of the plantation lifestyle, so the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Portuguese.
BOURDAIN: Indeed, all history can be explained what's on your plate. This is a prime example. Behold, bitches, the plate lunch. The most identifiable and essential feature of the plate lunch is this, a big scoop or two of white rice and potato-mac salad. There is nothing more Hawaiian. Served along side a protein, like chicken catsi (ph), or this hamburger steak, burger-like patty drowned in dark sinister sticky, shiny gravy. Or vodokakiari (ph), seared hahi (ph) with nori and sesame seeds.
AKITAHITO: Oh, my gosh, that looks beautiful.
BOURDAIN: Oh, yeah, that's going to work. All right. I sit this right on top of the rice.
AKITAHITO: Yep. Get some of that salad on there too.
BOURDAIN: Get that sinister gravy on.
They may not be Hawaiian, but they are now. They're fundamentally local. I mean, this food, the most delicious, let's be honest, delicious. This is not healthy eating.
AKITAHITO: We're kind of paying the price for it right now in the health of the state, which is terrible. As I take a bite of a hamburger.
BOURDAIN: As I said, just so good.
AKITAHITO: If you really want to do Hawaii right, you've got to get that. That's a power that Hawaii and the ina has is that, if you show aloha and you give without asking, the ina is going to recognize it and shower its blessings upon you.
BOURDAIN: So you think traditional Hawaiian culture and lifestyle has a chance against the modern world?
AKITAHITO: I think so. The beautiful part about my ancestors is they realized there was a limited number of resources where they lived, so they observed nature to the best possible they could to figure out what were the cycles and how do we preserve this resource? Hawaiian culture can teach the whole world something that it needs to know, is that we all live on an island. And we are all part of the same community. Let's all show aloha to the ina and show aloha to everybody else as well.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC)
[21:46:49] BOURDAIN (voice-over): An extraordinary man lives in this house, Shep Gordon, long time resident on Maui, legendary talent manager. Maybe you know some of the people whose careers he's looked after: Alice Cooper, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Blondie, Pink Floyd. He was years ahead of the chef exPLOsion, shepherding Emeril through his career. He's produced films, worked alongside great French chefs like Roger Velshae (ph), became close to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Basically, done everything with everybody in every place.
SHEP GORDON, TALENT MANAGER & HAWAII RESIDENT: I first got here 40 years ago. I put one foot on the island and I knew I was living here the rest of my life.
BOURDAIN (on camera): Do you ever look out there and it's wallpaper? GORDON: Never. Never. I say it out loud, first words in the morning,
thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, every day.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): Shep is famously one of the most generous and enthusiastic of hosts, a more stand-up loyal guy you could barely imagine, and no wonder they call the documentary based on his life "Super Mitch." That's how he's known around the world.
Here, he's known that guy who throws great parties.
Prep starts early. With chef's friend, Julio, a Maui-born-and-bred rancher, with help from local chef, Sheldon Sini (ph).
Middle of the night, in a traditional emudone (ph) filled with lava rocks. The fire allowed to burn down to coals before the pig, wrapped in combination of banana leaves and tea leaves, is dropped in.
JULIO: OK, you guys ready for the unveiling? Hold on.
BOURDAIN: 12 hours later, you dig it up and, well, it's party time.
(on camera): What you've been saying is you've been drinking steadily since 5:00 this morning?
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't say. It didn't come out of my mouth.
(LAUGHTER)
BOURDAIN: Behold. The magnificence.
It's a very important part of your childhood. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Wow. Look at that.
You just lift the bones out by hand?
JULIO: Yep.
Ready?
BOURDAIN: Just dump them in into a bucket. Awesome.
(LAUGHTER)
Wow.
(APPLAUSE)
BOURDAIN: Wow. That's pretty much the way I want to end up.
(LAUGHTER)
Pour me into a pot.
(LAUGHTER) BOURDAIN (voice-over): There's lots to do and everyone pitches in to help. It's an extended, all-day affair of prepping, chopping, dicing, slicing, mixing. Of course, there is some sampling along the way. Like this wild pig sausage that someone was nice enough to stop by with.
Sheldon works up a potato-mac salad.
SINI (ph): One more time. Hit me one more time.
BOURDAIN: Julio carves up unicorn fish, which he caught himself earlier in the day. Chef Mark Tarbell (ph) stuffs a couple of fresh red snappers before throwing them in the oven. This poi pounded fresh out back. And somewhere pig's foot soup is happily bubbling away.
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
[21:50:13] BOURDAIN (on camera): Why do I want to do this?
(LAUGHTER)
(voice-over): There is chili pepper water used for dipping or taken as an auxiliary shot for regularity or for boner medicine or whatever.
(SHOUTING)
BOURDAIN: Oh, yeah. There is also Spam noodles. There is no party without Spam.
(LAUGHTER)
By dinner time, the beer, wine and festive beverages have been flowing for hours. Also, moods have been adjusted, in a completely natural way indigenous to the islands, of course.
(on camera): How about Julio and the Pig?
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, man.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have cooked a lot of things. I ain't never seen one poured into a pot neatly.
(LAUGHTER)
JULIO: It's what I love. This is what we do on the island. This is what it's about.
BOURDAIN: Always bring the ohana, bring the family, bring the kids. You rarely ever see a party where there aren't kids.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ohana means the --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Family.
BOURDAIN: Extended family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like you are now ohana to everybody here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we can borrow money from you.
(LAUGHTER)
BOURDAIN (voice-over): As happens, I have come to find out things end up in the most natural just-kind-of-happens why, song and some dancing.
(SINGING)
BOURDAIN: This is Willie K. And that's his daughter, Lisette. And it's pretty damn captivating.
(SINGING)
BOURDAIN: It's getting near the end for me. And I look over at Shep and see a happy man surrounded by friends, by family really -- his ohana.
(SINGING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:56:12] THEROUX: To be Hawaiian to me, there needs to be a sense of connection to a place. Some sense of responsibility for it. It should be about being honest to a place, to be honest to what you love and to be honest to what you value is a road that's constantly trying to be more and more informed. I don't know sometimes how to be fully honest. I don't know enough. What I love about the oceans, that's my path way, that I go on the oceans to seek that sense of truth.
BOURDAIN (on camera): They said I can see whales, like close up. I had reasons for optimism. All week I had been staring out to sea watching hump-back whales leaping out of the ocean, spouting and frolicking.
(on camera): Are things compared to other parts of the word, are conservation of efforts as far as marine mammal miss if general but whales in particular going well?
DR. JOE MOBLEY, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII: That's the one thing on the planet that is. They are talking about taking humpbacks off the endangered species list. It's good to hear they have recovered but then it may make it easy to add to the whaling list again.
BOURDAIN (voice-over): It's mating season in Hawaii for the nearly 10,000 humpback whales that migrate down from southeast Alaska each year. Dr. Joe Mobley, of the University of Hawaii, has dedicated his career to studying these whales.
MOBLEY: Yeah, I guess the song is supposed to be the most complex display in the animal kingdom. When you are close, you can feel it through your whole body. Like 180 D.B., really loud. Wow.
BOURDAIN (on camera): They don't mind us at all, do they?
(MUSIC)
BOURDAIN (on camera): Oh, we got it.
MOBLEY: That was amazing.
BOURDAIN: That was incredible.
MOBLEY: Unbelievable.
