Anthony Bourdain‘s 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, turned him from a nobody chef into a superstar authority figure, thanks to his sardonic witticisms, the insider-y way he let readers in on culinary secrets (like how all restaurants reuse uneaten table bread), and his own struggles with addiction. Now those stories and more will serve as the basis for Tony, a biopic starring Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t) as Bourdain, due in August.
A trailer for the film shows Bourdain’s transformation from a recalcitrant writer-turned-kitchen hand, insisting to his coworkers that he can cook and write, into a chef with a vision. “We’re gonna start with this as a special,” Bourdain tells the head chef (Antonio Banderas) in one scene. “Every Friday, something fancy but not pretentious, something sexy, makes you wanna fuck, you know, something only you can do.” The head chef’s knowing smile says everything about Bourdain’s promise. In another scene, Bourdain says, “If anybody asks, I’m not a writer. I work in a kitchen.” But it’s obvious that’s not the whole story.
The trailer shows Bourdain’s maverick attitude, set to the punk rock of Television and Spoon’s ponderous “Wild.” It features Bourdain’s callow volatility, his hubris, and his drive, but it also suggests the film will capture the sex, drugs, and rock-dwelling crustaceans that made his legend (though Bourdain’s famous oyster metaphor doesn’t make it in the trailer) appealing to the producers of the TV shows that made him famous, No Reservations and Parts Unknown, on which he starred until his death by suicide in 2018.
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Dominic Sessa as Anthony Bourdain in Tony
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Filmmaker Matt Johnson (Nirvanna: The Band – The Show – The Movie) directed the film, which also features Emilia Jones, Dagmara Dominczyk, Rich Sommers, Stavros Halkias, and Antonio Banderas, among others. Johnson focused on two Kitchen Confidential chapters for the story. “Those two chapters of Kitchen Confidential read like ‘Genesis’ to me,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “So little happens, but the margins are packed. It meant the cast, and I could investigate this man’s origin together, knowing only where he would end up 20 years later.”
“We chose to support Tony because it is not a standard biopic and doesn’t attempt to summarize a life,” Bourdain’s estate said in a statement (via EW). “Guided by the vision of director Matt Johnson, the film depicts one transformative summer in 1975 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is an interpretation, as that part of Tony’s life will always remain somewhat unknown.”
