Director Matt Johnson Didn’t Understand the Anthony Bourdain Hype When He Signed on for

Matt Johnson, the director behind A24’s Anthony Bourdain movie, Tony, didn’t know all that much about Anthony Bourdain. “I viewed him as just a kind of Gen X host who I had zero connection with,” says the filmmaker.

Far from a cradle-to-grave retelling, Tony instead focuses on the least documented blip in an incredibly well-chronicled and perpetually dissected life. Johnson wasn’t even that interested in the man behind the myth; he wanted to show the boy before the man.

What Happened

Johnson has carved out an interesting career for himself as a filmmaker. He broke out with comedy webseries Nirvana the Band the Show and followed this with indie features, including moon-landing mockumentary Operation Avalanche, the tech dramedy BlackBerry and most recently the.

• Johnson and Miller are credited as writers along with Lou Howe and Todd Bartles, whose script landed on the 2024 Black List.

• Tony is in theaters in limited release Aug 7 and wide release Aug 21.

• He has this natural élan with everything he does that we look at and go ‘God, why can’t I be like that?’ And the truth is, he couldn’t be like that, too.

Key Details

Tony is at once a departure for Johnson — his first non-Canadian production and his first feature that he doesn’t star in — and deeply personal, inspired by his and star Dominic Sessa’s own adolescences. Loosely drawn from a handful of chapters.

• Because Anthony Bourdain is as invincible as a Clorox bottle.

• We can think about Anthony Bourdain as a flawed, insecure, less verbally fluent person, so that we have somewhere to go ourselves.

• How exciting is the character of Spider-Man if he was never a nerdy teenager named Peter Parker?

Why It Matters

The kitchen itself is populated by a ragtag group of cooks (played by Leo Woodall and Stavros Halkias, among others) and is run by a pious chef (Antonio Banderas). Johnson talked to THR about shucking oysters, landing the film’s stand-out cameo and.

• And that’s a hopeful message, not a negative one.

• What we’re trying to do is give everybody who has feelings about Anthony Bourdain the sense that he was not always such.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by The Hollywood Reporter as more details emerge