Tony and What’s Making Us Happy

Pop Culture Happy Hour - NPR

In this episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, hosts Aisha Harris and Linda Holmes discuss the biographical film 'Tony,' which portrays a format

Key takeaways

• The movie takes artistic license with Bourdain's real-life timeline and relationships, blending multiple summers and fictionalizing key figures to focus on the emotional essence of his formative years.
• Despite its conventional coming-of-age structure, the film succeeds in capturing Bourdain's evolving appreciation for food as a social and cultural experience rather than just fine dining.

Main topics

• Biographical films and creative liberties
• Anthony Bourdain's early life and career beginnings

Notable quotes

"I think it's hard to imagine the bear existing without Bourdain having existed first."

"Taking this moment in his life, not the moment when he was the most famous... is a more interesting film than it would have been if they had tried to pull back and show you his whole life."

Conclusion

While 'Tony' may not stand out as a groundbreaking film due to its familiar coming-of-age tropes, the movie succeeds

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the Trump administration is taking credit for a major drop in violent crime, murder, robbery, assault, all down in big cities and small towns. We're going to dig into the numbers and unpack whether this is really as simple as the president claims it is on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (0:23) Hey, before we get to the show, we've got a quick ask for you. If Pop Culture Happy Hour has ever helped you explain Barbenheimer, survive a Marvel phase, or pretend you understood Severance, do us a favor and leave a five-star review. Thanks so much. Bourdain was a huge part of how people became fascinated by chefs and kitchens, both the way Speaker 5 (0:44) that really high-end kitchens work and the way that kind of regular kitchens work. And, you know, he did so much to make people. interested in restaurants that I think, I think it's hard to imagine the bear, you know, existing without Bourdain having existed first. Speaker 6 (1:01) Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 6 (1:06) While most of us know Anthony Bourdain as the charismatic foodie behind the book Kitchen Confidential and shows like No Reservations, but before he was in the public eye, he was just Tony, a wayward, overconfident young guy who was kind of a piece of work. At least that's how he's portrayed in a new movie about his early life. He's played by Dominic Sessa, and it focuses on the pivotal summer of 1975 when Bourdain worked in his first kitchen, a tiny hole in the wall in Provincetown on Cape Cod. I'm Aisha Harris. This is NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, and it's just me and my co-host today, Linda Holmes. Hello, Linda. Hello, Aisha. Well, I'm very excited to talk to you about this movie. And look, when Tony begins, he's a student at Vassar, an aspiring author, and he fails to procure a fellowship, so he decides on a whim to follow his crush, Nancy, to Provincetown for the summer. She's played by Amelia Jones. While there, he stumbles upon a dishwashing job in a restaurant run by this meticulous, no-nonsense chef played by Antonio Banderas. And like plenty of coming-of-age stories before it, he gets into some trouble, awkwardly tries to woo Nancy, and discovers a deep appreciation for culinary life. Tony is directed by Matt Johnson and is in theaters now. And Linda, I'm going to kick it off with you. I feel as though you probably have had some sort of relationship with Anthony Bourdain's work before he died. So I'm curious to hear about that and also how this movie shaked out for you. Speaker 5 (2:32) I did really like this movie. I was a big fan of Bourdain. I had seen a lot of his work on television, enjoyed him very much as a, like, you know, he was a judge on Top Chef for a short time and things like that. I had read some of his work. I also weirdly sat at a table with him at a book publishing thing one time, and he was just, like, very nice and normal and friendly and served me salad and, you know, things like that. I think they made a couple of really good decisions with this movie, one of which is the historical details. the accuracy of the specific biographical details are quite loose, right? Some of this sort of happened. I don't think that the Antonio Banderas chef maps necessarily to a specific one person. There's also a co-worker played by Leo Woodall, who I also think doesn't necessarily map onto a specific one person. And I base that on having gone back to Kitchen Confidential and kind of read some of the stuff about this phase of his life. And in fact, the... filmmakers have talked about the fact that this sort of combines a couple of summers and, you Speaker 6 (3:39) know, Speaker 5 (3:39) he didn't really go all by himself. And, you know, that isn't really when he first connected with Nancy. I think it is so smart to give yourself the freedom not to be completely one-to-one. Right. Because that's not necessarily the way to make a good movie. Speaker 6 (3:55) I Speaker 5 (3:55) think what you want to do is be... true to trying to explain this phase of this person's life and what you understand it to have felt like and how you understand it to have affected him. And I think that feels very authentic to what I know of him, even though the specific details in some cases are, I think, made up. The other thing I really like is, you know, you and I have talked about biopics many times. Speaker 6 (4:20) And Speaker 5 (4:20) one thing about biopics is that I tend to prefer ones that take a small slice of someone's life and cover it in detail rather than the ones that wind up feeling like they tried to film the person's entire Wikipedia page. So I think taking this moment in his life, not the moment when he was the most famous. Right? Yeah. Taking this formative moment in his life and focusing really closely on that is a more interesting film than it would have been if they had tried to pull back and show you his whole life. It also allows you to cast Dominic Sessa, who I was a huge fan of from The Holdovers. Yes. And who I think is an inspired bit of casting here. I think he's very good. But yeah, I like this a lot. What did you think? Speaker 6 (5:03) Yeah. I mean, I can't say that I was a devout. or close follower of Bourdain, but I knew who he was and I did appreciate what he did for this idea of sort of good food can come from anywhere. It doesn't have to be the best, the most Michelin star restaurant, whatever. For sure. And I love that approach to it. And he seems like a really sort of, I understood the draw to him. Speaker 8 (5:27) And Speaker 6 (5:28) I agree with you. Like, I think the best way to approach that kind of person in that kind of life is the way they do it here, which is focused on the one. the one summer. And even if that means, you know, playing fast and loose with some of the details, you still get an essence or a sense of who he might have been at that time in his life. And so I liked that. I felt though, throughout the entire movie, I was like, this just feels like lots of other movies I've