Anthony Bourdain has been turned into something close to a cultural saint since his death. The tattoos, the cigarettes, the food, the travel, the brutally funny observations - all of it has helped turn the late chef and television host into an almost untouchable icon.
The new A24 film Tony is apparently having none of that.
Instead of beginning with celebrity Bourdain and working backward, director Matt Johnson's film zeroes in on a far less polished version: a 19-year-old who follows a girl to Provincetown, Massachusetts, stumbles into restaurant work and has absolutely no idea that he is beginning the journey that will eventually make him famous. A24 describes the movie simply as the story of a teenage Bourdain entering the "chaotic world of a restaurant kitchen" during the summer that changed his life.
Dominic Sessa, best known for The Holdovers, plays young Tony alongside Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas and Stavros Halkias.
But the juicy part is what the filmmakers refused to do: clean Bourdain up.
One of the lines being used to frame the movie comes straight from Bourdain's own description of his younger self in Kitchen Confidential, where he characterized himself as spoiled, miserable, narcissistic and self-destructive. Director Matt Johnson used that brutally unflattering self-assessment as a key to figuring out who the movie's Bourdain should be.
In other words, this isn't Saint Anthony of Parts Unknown.
It is a movie about the guy before he became the guy.
That distinction mattered to Sessa, who told Newsweek that he couldn't play the 19-year-old as though the famous television host's wisdom and confidence were already fully formed. The film instead follows a young Bourdain after rejection from a writing program, chasing the woman who would eventually become his first wife, Nancy Putkoski, to Cape Cod and taking restaurant work largely because he needs something to do.
And that relationship gives Tony another interesting wrinkle. Putkoski isn't simply some forgotten pre-fame girlfriend dropped into the story for romance. Bourdain eventually married her in 1985, and they remained together until their 2005 divorce. The movie goes back to the period when the two were young and Bourdain was still trying to figure out what his life might become.
A longtime friend of Bourdain's, chef John Tesar, admitted that he went into the movie practically ready to dislike it. Instead, he said he found its depiction of Bourdain emotionally convincing, particularly the film's handling of his affection for Nancy and his complicated, sometimes myth-making personality.
There was apparently pressure from inside Bourdain's own circle to make things even messier.
According to Eater, Bourdain's longtime literary agent Kimberly Witherspoon, who serves as an executive producer on the project, encouraged the writers not to soften young Tony. The filmmakers deliberately avoided the standard birth-to-death biopic and concentrated on the troubled Provincetown summer because it allowed them to show Bourdain's flaws rather than simply assemble a greatest-hits reel of his later accomplishments.
That's a pretty revealing choice considering how fiercely Bourdain's memory is guarded by fans.
The movie also has a connection to someone who knew the real man exceptionally well: chef Eric Ripert, one of Bourdain's closest friends. Ripert has participated in promotion for the film and even joined Sessa and Johnson at its New York premiere in July.
Then there's Antonio Banderas, who plays the seasoned chef who becomes an important influence on young Tony. Early reviews have singled out Banderas as one of the film's standouts, while the kitchen itself is portrayed less as glamorous culinary theater and more as the rough, profane, occasionally drug-fueled environment that Bourdain later wrote about so vividly.
And here's a funny little confession from the actor playing one of history's most famous chefs: Sessa didn't actually become much of a cook.
He told People that despite playing Bourdain, he did relatively little serious cooking during production and joked that his own cooking ability may have improved by only about one percent. The point, according to Johnson, wasn't to show a culinary genius already operating at full strength. It was to show a clueless kid accidentally discovering where he belonged.
That may be why Tony appears to work better than the usual celebrity origin story.
Audiences already know where Bourdain ends up: Kitchen Confidential, No Reservations, Parts Unknown, international celebrity and eventually his death by suicide in 2018 at age 61.
The filmmakers know that too. But instead of treating every youthful moment like a flashing neon sign screaming, "THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER," the film reportedly allows Bourdain to be immature, arrogant, uncertain and occasionally ridiculous.
Even the movie's Cape Cod setting was treated almost like another character. Production returned to locations connected to Bourdain's actual Provincetown years, including places tied to the restaurant culture and to Nancy Putkoski's life there, helping recreate the environment in which his obsession with kitchens first took hold.
Sessa himself wasn't even a lifelong Bourdain disciple before getting the role. He has acknowledged that Bourdain hadn't occupied a huge place in his life beforehand, meaning he had to discover the person instead of simply imitating a hero he'd worshipped for years.
Perhaps that's exactly what Tony needed.
Bourdain doesn't require another monument.
There are already documentaries, books, television episodes and millions of fans keeping the mythology alive.
What is more interesting is the awkward young man underneath it - the failed would-be writer who chased a girl to Cape Cod, washed dishes, entered a dysfunctional kitchen and suddenly glimpsed another possible life.
The legend came later.
Tony seems far more interested in the mess that came first.
