The recent mythologisation of Anthony Bourdain is something to behold. It has arrived as our foodie culture deepens and more people in Britain and the US have started to realise that, as Bourdain so artfully put it, “Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of… your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma.”
I can’t help but think all this attention, much of which has become mawkish, feverish, would’ve made Bourdain a little uncomfortable. He was soft and understated in his television work (at least for an American), which is when we all feel like we got to know him. Overt and cloying enthusiasm was never really Bourdain’s bag.
When I saw a preview screening of Tony, the new biopic from director Matt Johnson, at a Soho cinema, people clapped. The film charts Bourdain’s first job washing dishes in an everyday kitchen, at the Flagship Bar & Grill in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1975. It was a formative and life-changing time for the young man, and it would be another 25 years before he became one of the most famous chefs in the world, with bestselling memoir Kitchen Confidential and a raft of Emmy-winning travel shows to his name.
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Aged 19 and having learned that he hadn’t been accepted to a prestigious New York writing scholarship – “I’m a writer”, Bourdain repeatedly and gratingly says early in the film, despite not yet being one – he steals money from his father’s wallet and skips town, departing his middle-class life in suburban New Jersey for the ramshackle chaos of party season in Provincetown.
Young Tony, played brilliantly by Dominic Sessa, didn’t think he’d end up soaping plates; he was following his first love, Nancy Putkoski (Emelia Jones, who I imagine anyone could fall in love with), who he went on to marry 10 years later, before they divorced in 2005.
The biopic tells a lesser-known story of Bourdain. He was called Tony then, as the title makes obvious, and he was, if the film is true to form, almost unbearably annoying. He was arrogant, he lied, and he was deeply insecure.
The first 10-15 minutes, during which we witness this thin, floppy haired “writer” mope about, are less than enthralling. Then he arrives in Cape Cod, drinks a bunch of beers, and gets punched in the face by a cocaine-loving, bride-shagging line cook (Leo Woodall; fairly funny), and the film picks up. Once you see that the film is as much a romcom, a coming-of-age story, as it is an observation of a famous chef, it gets easier to digest.
Cape Cod looks like a romantic place. A captivating and enchanting one. Tony’s boss Ciro (Antonio Banderas) makes sure of it as an old, wise, melancholic chef with a backstory that could have been a film in itself.
So many talented chefs, I suppose, never leave the kitchen. Especially back then. They’re tough, mad places, full of tough, mad people. This film captures them beautifully – all the hangovers, the cut fingers, the shouting and the food. Always the food. Tony didn’t know then that he would use it as a lens through which to view the world, to tell its stories.
“You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together,” he famously said. “Travel isn’t always pretty… The journey changes you; it should change you.” Maybe he would’ve not said any of these words had he not toiled over endless sinks; shucked oysters; not, for a while at least, got the girl.
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Tony’s early moments as a cook are important. Because he was important. His essay for the New Yorker, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, was read around the world; Kitchen Confidential remains legendary, unmissable for any fan of food and many more who don’t care much for food at all.
And then, from the age of 44, his restless curiosity and progressive worldview was captured in shows like No Reservations and Parts Unknown, which inspired millions to see food as a gateway to understanding other people and cultures.
This film is a glimpse into the origins of the man who would be cited time and again; whose words are tattooed on thousands; who treated his body not as a temple, but an amusement park. “Enjoy the ride,” he said.
Bourdain ran out of hope in 2018, at the age of 61. As a 19-year-old, he was full of it. And if his youth teaches us anything, it is to try to cling on. The ride isn’t always easy, but maybe it’s worth it.
Tony is in UK cinemas on August 14
