‘I Think Tony Would Have Hated This.’ Anthony Bourdain's Former Assistant, Brother Dissect A24's New Biopic

Two years ago, A24 announced plans for Tony, a biopic about a single summer in the life of the late Anthony Bourdain. Predictably, a vocal contingent of his fans (or at least the extremely online ones) declared, “Tony would’ve 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 working as Tony’s assistant, a job I started in 2009, I quickly learned not to predict his responses to the many queries that came to him through me. He 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. When Vogue magazine asked him to sit for a fashion shoot, I was certain he’d roll his eyes, but he said to me, “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 had no involvement with the A24 biopic. While the film was shot and edited, I stayed busy with Care and Feeding, 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. “My younger brother, Chris, is about as different from me as anyone can be,” Tony wrote in his 2001 book A Cook’s Tour. “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 El Chivito d’Oro, an Uruguayan restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens, Chris and I discuss 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 the we’re now splitting, piled high with steak, ham, bacon, egg and cheese. “I had a troubling encounter just last week, talking to my neighbors,” he says. “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 continues. “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.” I know exactly what Chris is getting at. I wince when I hear or see someone reposting that viral, fan-written quote (“Eat at a local restaurant tonight”) that’s endlessly misattributed to Tony. I hate when people are careless with the facts, or reduce him to a single outrageous moment (eating a live cobra heart on TV, 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, telling us exactly where we find this fictionalized young Tony on this journey: “I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” Over the next two hours, we see him unhappily enrolled in college and chasing the object of his romantic fascination to Provincetown, 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. “Tony’s a larger-than-life figure now, a spiritual figure to so many people,” says Todd Bartels, who wrote the initial script with Lou Howe, about the impetus for telling this specific slice of Tony’s story. “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 Tony. “I’ve read about how it’s supposedly ‘a touching and heartwarming story.’” He says 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, the aforementioned documentary. I feel irritated by the premature naysaying, and the audacity it takes to render a verdict before seeing the work. 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 and 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. There are also some solid jokes that get at kitchen life, and Tony’s specific interests, and the story deftly captures his lifelong pursuit of the approval and protection of strong women. On the other hand, 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. Following a preview of the film, I ask 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 would Tony have felt about Tony? “Is there any biopic that the subject would actually like?” he asks. Those left behind by suicide are frequently angry. Steed readily cops to such feelings, and that he briefly considered 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. 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,” says Johnson, who seems 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.” 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.