How Would Tony the Man Have Felt About Tony the Film?
By August 3, 2026
Two years ago, A24 announced plans for Tony, a biopic about Anthony Bourdain. Predictably, a vocal contingent of his fans—or at least the extremely online ones—declared, “I think Tony would have hated this,” with absolute conviction, as if they’d just been ripping Marlboros and downing negronis with the man himself.
Would he have hated it? I didn’t know the answer, and for a while, I put the question, and the film, out of my mind. When I started working as Tony’s assistant in 2009, I quickly learned not to predict his responses to the many queries that came to him through me. How would Tony the man feel about Tony the film? As Bourdain’s long-time assistant, I learned never to predict his responses.
Why Predicting Tony Was Impossible
Yo Gabba Gabba and Overweening Vanity
Tony was often more than happy to do interviews with people whose viewpoints he adamantly opposed. He jumped at the opportunity to appear on Yo Gabba Gabba, a show aimed at toddlers. On another occasion, I was certain he’d roll his eyes, but he said, “For reasons of overweening vanity, I’m eager to do it,” before rattling off a list of designers he admired.
I’d consulted for Roadrunner, the 2021 Bourdain documentary, but I had no involvement with the A24 biopic. While the film was shot and edited, I stayed busy with my 2025 memoir, in which I address the weird privilege of living and working in Tony’s massive shadow, both while he was alive and after his death in 2018. With me are the many talented people who cooked with him, helped make his TV shows, and published his writing. Tony’s brother, Chris Bourdain, lives in that shadow, too.
Chris Bourdain in the Family Shadow
A family photo from July 1974 shows Tony, Pierre, and Christopher Bourdain eating dinner at home. In his 2001 book A Cook’s Tour, Tony wrote of Chris: “My younger brother, Chris, is about as different from me as anyone can be. While I’ve spent my whole life living a hand-to-mouth existence, paycheck to paycheck, letting the good times roll, not giving a fuck … Chris has always been the responsible one, the good son.”
Over lunch at an Uruguayan restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens, Chris and I discussed Tony the shadow and Tony the film. In 2008, Chris appeared with Tony on an Uruguay episode of No Reservations, in which they traced their roots and enjoyed a chivito sandwich, similar to the one we were splitting, piled high with steak, ham, bacon, egg and cheese.
“I had a troubling encounter just last week, talking to my neighbors,” Chris said. “One woman realized that I was Anthony Bourdain’s brother, and someone else asked, ‘Who was Anthony Bourdain?’ She said, ‘He was one of the best chefs in the world.’ Tony never thought he was the best chef. He described himself as a somewhat-skilled cook. He never called himself an expert. He was a brilliant commentator on anything you threw in front of him—travel, politics, anything that caught his interest. He was the modern Mark Twain. They totally missed the point, and that made me very sad.”
From Publicity Stills to Kitchen Confidential
Tony Bourdain appeared in a publicity still for A Cook’s Tour, his first television series, for Food Network. I know exactly what Chris is getting at. I wince when I see or hear someone reposting the viral, fan-written quote (“Eat at a local restaurant tonight”) and hate when people are careless with the facts, or reduce him to a single outrageous moment—eating a live cobra heart on TV, or warning against fish on Monday in Kitchen Confidential. Tony was a complex person who willingly put himself in the entertainment industry, which can, unfortunately, compress a whole person down into a series of bullet points and memes.
To my eye, Tony the film does the opposite, building a narrative framework from elements of a true story that invites viewers to consider the humble origins of this near-mythic figure. Before the action begins, a quote from Kitchen Confidential appears on the screen: “I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” Then we see him unhappily enrolled in college and chasing the object of his romantic fascination to Provincetown, Massachusetts—where a 1976 photograph caught him that summer—navigating temptations and disappointments through the lenses of desire and ambition, making mistakes as he tries to figure out what kind of man he should be. A mid-1970s photo shows Tony Bourdain (back left) and friends at Vassar College.
The Film’s Origin Story
Todd Bartels, who wrote the initial script with Lou Howe, explained the impetus: “Tony’s a larger-than-life figure now, a spiritual figure to so many people. How did he get from being an angry little shit from New Jersey to this globe-trotting ambassador connecting people through food?”
Chris Bourdain had an early opportunity to see the film. “I’ve read about how it’s supposedly ‘a touching and heartwarming story,’” he said. He wasn’t ready, and isn’t sure if he will ever be. “What is it, Ratatouille meets The Karate Kid? If he were to ever hear such words associated with anything to do with him … I think Tony would have hated the entire idea of this film.”
I’m not sure. As the film’s premiere date approaches, the online grumbling—along, it must be said, with plenty of happy anticipation—has intensified, much as it did before the release of Roadrunner. I feel irritated by the premature naysaying, and the audacity it takes to render a verdict before seeing the work.
Seeing Tony Twice: What Works and What Grates
Dominic Sessa’s Young Tony
Having now seen the film twice, there are things I love about it. Dominic Sessa is a wonderfully naturalistic actor whose alternately swaggering and awkward gestures, expressions, and body language make me feel, for a second, that I am seeing Tony himself. Sessa is an attractive young man with Tony’s impossibly lean physique, who looks good in every single piece of 1975-era costuming. I predict that Tony’s vanity would in no way be offended by Dom’s portrayal of him.
- The film has solid jokes that get at kitchen life and Tony’s specific interests.
- The story deftly captures his lifelong pursuit of the approval and protection of strong women.
- Tony famously abhorred a neat wrap-up when closing out his TV shows, and I can imagine his vocal objection to the narrative’s sunny resolution.
A Cook’s Tour and Cambodia
For the 2001 series A Cook’s Tour, Bourdain traveled from Phnom Penh by boat on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake. He also shot an episode with director-producer Lydia Tenaglia somewhere on the road from Battambang, Cambodia. A 2015 photo shows Bourdain on the Asbury Park boardwalk during a Parts Unknown shoot.
Grief, Anger, and the Unknowable Verdict
Following a preview of the film, I asked Michael Steed, an Emmy-winning producer who worked with Tony for years and was with him in France at the end of his life, how Tony would have felt about Tony. “Is there any biopic that the subject would actually like?” he asked.
Those left behind by suicide are frequently angry. Steed readily cops to such feelings, and to briefly considering a kind of cosmic revenge via making work that he knows Tony would have hated. “When I was in a really angry place, I imagined writing a Broadway musical based on Parts Unknown, and devoting an entire season of Mind of a Chef to Guy Fieri.”
I recognize all of it—Steed’s anger, Chris’s reluctance, the skepticism of some superfans—as variations on grief. We would far rather have Tony alive and making sense of an increasingly nonsensical world than anyone else trying to make sense of him. I wonder all the time what he would say and do about the violence and chaos of life in 2026.
Director Matt Johnson’s Take
There is no way of knowing what Tony would think of this film, but still I put the question to director Matt Johnson, who previously told an amped-up version of a tech rags-to-riches-to-rags story with the 2023 feature film BlackBerry. Was he aware of the doubting Tony stans, and how did that affect his filmmaking?
“‘Tony would have hated this.’ That’s the quote, I know,” Johnson said, seeming cheerfully unaffected by the discourse, while conceding, “…there are probably elements of this movie that, were he to put it on, he’d be cringing, but even if he left the room, I’d like to think that he’d be watching through the crack of the door, saying, ‘While this is factually incorrect, it is metaphorically true.’ My job with this or any story I tell is to be as curious and truth-seeking as I can possibly be.”
A Riddle That Answers and Negates Itself
How Tony would regard the film is a riddle that answers and negates itself, like his tattoo of a snake eating its own tail. If he were still here to see it, there would be no film to dissect his origin story or explore his vast influence on food and travel. Instead of writing this essay today, I might be working on a new book with him, making his haircut appointments, stocking his fridge, and arranging fresh flowers in his apartment, to make a welcoming place for him to return to after a long time away. I would trade a lot for the chance to do all of that again.
This essay is by the author of a 2025 New York Times best-selling memoir, a James Beard Award winner, co-author of New York Times best-selling books with Anthony Bourdain, author of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography (2021), and a writer for The New York Times, Vogue, and GQ.