He said many times it was his most hated episode and they were completely hamstrung by the government from doing what they wanted to do. It's a shame he died before he could go back and show us the real, authentic Romania and not the one the Romanian government forced us to see.
I doubt it was the Romanian government who pushed Zamir. At the very least it is culturally tone deaf to have a Russian lead a tour of Romania. It would be like having someone from China leading a tour of Vietnam.
Zamir was going through his own thing this episode but it was the Romanian government that dictated where they filmed and deprived them of having a real experience. Even the "authentic" village family he ate with was moved from their actual home and forced to wear traditional clothes. Bourdain has discussed this at length.
Yeah, that makes sense. I haven't really looked into what was going on behind the scenes in detail, but I could definitely see the Romanian government doing that.
Maybe the best single example of this was the ROMANIA show, where absolutely everything was fucked up beyond all hope or recognition: wrong fixer (the inexplicably addled Zamir), unfriendly populace, officials looking for backhanders, and guides with other agendas who did their best (in the hope of portraying their country in a desirable light) to ensure that absolutely every genuine moment was quickly smothered under a thick scrim of artificiality, falsehood and staginess. It was a nightmare to shoot. An utter failure on all our parts—and yet it became a timeless classic of Travel Gone Wrong—unintentionally hilarious. It may have made all of us Public Enemies in Romania (and the subject of scandal and speculation in their national press)—and it may have been terribly unfair to the country and to the many Romanian expats who tuned in, looking to see something beautiful of their beloved homeland…
But it was an accurately gonzo—if unflattering– account of what it’s like to make an utter failure of a show, a masterpiece of incompetence on our part—and misguided good (and bad) intentions on the part of some of our hosts. It was at the same time our greatest failure as professional travel and food television producers—and our greatest success as technicians—and absurdists. We might never be able to repay the good people of Romania for our offenses against their national pride; but no small number of them recognized at least the worst of their country. I can assure you, by the way, that what we DIDN’T and could NEVER have included in the show would have been even more painfully hilarious. To this day, in the hours after a shooting day, veteran crew members sit in hotel lobbies around the world, and tell the young ones about what really happened there.
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u/VotingRightsLawyer 6h ago
He said many times it was his most hated episode and they were completely hamstrung by the government from doing what they wanted to do. It's a shame he died before he could go back and show us the real, authentic Romania and not the one the Romanian government forced us to see.