Tony Tells the Tale of Anthony Bourdain's Teenage Years as the Famed Chef Winds Up on a Journey of Culinary Discovery

Tony will be released in select theaters on August 7 before expanding nationwide on August 21. Eschewing the birth-to-death structure of celebrity biopics — as well as estate-mandated aggrandizing — Matt Johnson’s Tony focuses on a few chapters in the life of Anthony Bourdain from his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. During a summer spent in Cape Cod in the mid-1970s, teenage Tony learns for the first time that food, travel, and culture might be his forté. However, the late chef is hardly painted with a hagiographic brush; in fact, actor Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) builds on minor details from the book, like Bourdain’s cocky swagger and the ridiculous nunchucks he kept tucked into his belt, to create an insolent, selfish, but ultimately driven version of a man whose name we’d come to know. The movie is a blast, ensuring that Johnson is two-for-two this year alongside his time travel mockumentary, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie; however, the two films could not be more different in scope and style. If anything, Tony — a more measured and intentional work — shares its tonal DNA with Johnson’s BlackBerry, an intense tale of innovators a