Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Southern Italy, the heel of the boot.

Remote, vast open spaces.

The red earth here has a magnetic pull.

Raw, alternately charming and savage.

Grazie.

Now, in the annals of food,

this is like a divisive dish.

Basically anything with ricci, also known as uni.

We call it sea urchin roe.

This is truly one of the greatest things on Earth.

God damn.

Despite its uncanny beauty,

southern Italy's Puglia and Basilicata regions

are some of the least populated, least visited,

least known parts of the country...

A mix of sea, hills, valleys, and rich earth.

The food here is Italian but completely its own.

A little garlic, pepperoncino, parsley.

Sea urchin, some kind of fish, Fumane.

Pasta. That's it.

Oh, incredible.

Never been to this part of Italy before.

A lot of blue here.

Light browns and ochres and white.

I don't know; you just look at this place.

It demands a big space.

As I walk around, I'm always humming

these Ennio Morricone scores:

"For a Few Dollars More," "Once Upon a Time in the West."

Oh, this is so good.

Makes you want to start smoking again.

Oh, grazie.

Oh, God, that's good.

Jesus.

Feudal, ungovernable, it was believed once

that civilization and Christianity

would never reach this far south

into the hill of Italy's boot.

A lawless land filled with folklore

and tales of spirits and possession,

a blood soup of Christianity and Paganism.

I had an extremely handsome brother,

and I was a little... I was like an elf,

so I kind of didn't get the attention from the mother

that my brother did.

I had very big lips as a child, and she always used to say

that I should have plastic surgery.

But when you see my daughter, Sofia,

she's got my lips.

- Yeah. - But they look good on her.

Up in the mountains, you find tiny medieval-era villages

like Bernalda, seat of the paternal family roots

of this man, Francis Ford Coppola...

Welcome. Benvenuto.

Thank you.

One of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

You have deep roots here.

My grandfather always told us stories of Bernalda,

Bernalda Bella.

And oddly enough, he never had gone back

once he left as an American immigrant.

But it became mythical to me.

The story is that the family originally came from Lecce,

and someone got the sister pregnant,

and they killed her.

And then they became briganti,

so they were one step ahead of the law.

And then they settled down and became laborers

in the olive fields.

And that's really the origins of the Coppola family.

Because the south was so oppressed by the north,

it stayed the same.

They haven't had 1,000 years of cheap, "gyp the tourist."

And you come, and you can walk out in the street,

and you're in a real Italian town

where the people don't know anything about...

They'll invite you to the house for dinner here

quite innocently.

How long that will last, I don't know.

What we're looking at here

is food I thought you'd get a kick out of,

lampascioni, or what my family call...

It's the bulb of a flower, the hyacinth.

Wow.

You score it, and then you put it in a deep fryer,

and that turns it into a flower.

Beautiful.

Oh, wow.

This is incredible.

So you may have some history with this house.

I mean, it was...

Your grandfather was boning the help here?

It was... You know... heard that story.

My grandfather was... They called him zumpa balcone.

He was girl crazy.

And he would go up on the roof

and go down to where the maid was, Palmetta,

and conduct this affair.

And so when I found this place years later,

there was, in fact, a roof leading to a housemaid's.

And I fantasize that perhaps that was where it happened.

Dove... where's... We have to have more food.

Bring the secondo.

This is a dish we called the coldane.

How do you call it?

Cotenna.

This is basically... My father said...

- Pigskin. - This is the football.

Wait a minute.

You had this at your dinner table

as, like, a young man, as a kid?

- Yeah, a little kid. - Wow.

- I hated it. - Of course.

But now I don't.

Oh, so good.

Mmm.

We're dining at Palazzo Margherita,

not the ancestral home of generations of Coppolas

but might well have been the one-time manor house

of those who lorded over them

while they worked in the fields.

During Mussolini time, every town had a podestà,

the official of the fascist party.

Right.

And this family was the podestà.

The ladies here were so, you know, snobby.

We are low-class Italians.

They were more high-class Italians.

It took years and a lot of money

converting the once-grand but decaying mansion

into a boutique hotel.

You know, when you bought this place,

is there a sense of vengeance?

I... you know, by then,

"The Godfather" had come out 40 years ago.

No, no, I mean, look. It's not about the film.

It's about... a historical correction.

There's a saying.

You know what Italian Alzheimer's is?

Do you know what it is?

You forget everything but the grudge.

This is the only internal garden in Basilicata.

I don't think any of the normal people

had ever been permitted to visit it.

Right.

So I was happy that normal people

were gonna be here.

"The Godfather" was a weird experience in my life,

because it was so much more successful

than I could have ever anticipated

so that I became well-known around the world

in ways that was almost embarrassing.

And so when I came here,

they made me an honorary citizen,

and they had the little schoolchildren out in a parade.

And if I think about it, as a new kid in a school,

my greatest fear was embarrassment.

"Oh, here's Francis. He's a new student."

"Oh, Francis is a girl's name."

I was embarrassed in front of everyone,

and I was a total outsider.

And then when I became...

On the other side of "The Godfather,"

when I became so well-known, I was also an outsider.

So I've always been an outsider.

What's in there?

- Some lamb chops and... - Oh, lamb chops, okay.

Some lamb head.

Oh, the capuzzelle is in there?

It's all there.

So you're getting a whole lamb's head?

Oh, look at this. Here we go.

Come on out. Oh, that's very good.

Is this for me?

- Give me your plate. - Oh, yeah. Mmm.

Oh, this is fantastic.

Come here, little one.

Hello, sweetie pie. Hello.

This is my friend.

No, we went out last night, and it was so great.

We went to the local circus.

The tigers and giraffe and water oxen.

Did you go to the circus?

Was it good?

Cool. What was your favorite part?

Um, when the giant fake gorilla came.

The smell, the...

The smell of the port, some dead fish.

It's not fresh fish. It's dead fish.

I don't hate that smell either.

No, no.

Today, we fish.

For once, I'm confident of success

with Dino and Franco and their trusty wooden gozzo,

as they call these boats.

And for good luck, I have Asia Argento along,

who, in addition to directing and acting in films

for, like, the last 30 years,

has spent a hell of a lot of time doing this.

You have never done this? I've done this.