Most interviews about an Anthony Bourdain movie would probably begin with food, travel, or how closely the actor playing him has studied that unmistakable voice. Ours began with labor organizing and a mortgage scam. That seemed appropriate for “Tony,” a film built around the summer job that quietly redirected Bourdain’s entire life. Matt Johnson recalled that he lasted three days at a DVD-packing factory before he and a friend floated the idea of starting a union and were promptly fired. Stavros Halkias, meanwhile, spent a year in high school telemarketing for a company that tried to convince elderly people the government was calling them.
“I was so bad at it. I never sold one,” Halkias said. “I was kind of a hero, to my credit. But I realized, like, ‘Oh man, the world is bad. This whole world’s a scam. Why not just make art?”
Rather than trying to squeeze every career, country, addiction, and reinvention of Bourdain’s life into two hours, Johnson focuses on the restless 19-year-old before any of it happened. Played by Dominic Sessa, Tony travels to Provincetown and stumbles into the chaotic restaurant kitchen that will shape the rest of his life. The film also stars Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas, Dagmara Domińczyk and Rich Sommer.
Johnson had little interest in recreating the Bourdain audiences already know. “I’m always trying to make movies about things that happen before they reach the collective unconscious,” he explained. “I am not interested in the story once it hits the front page.”
As Johnson sees it, anyone familiar with Bourdain could probably invent a lost episode of one of his shows. “They could tell you, ‘Well, he goes to this country, and he eats this, and he says this, and he smokes a cigarette, and he gives this look at the camera,’” he said. “But what they can’t do is give you a sense of what he was like as a teenager creating himself.”
That choice also freed Sessa from having to spend the entire movie performing a collection of recognizable Bourdain mannerisms. There is no two-hour impersonation built around cigarettes, narration, and waiting for the audience to applaud every familiar gesture. Instead, “Tony” watches a young man try on different versions of himself before any of them have hardened into the icon people remember.
Halkias found his own way into the film as one of the personalities populating Tony’s new kitchen world. Johnson called him three weeks before filming and offered to write him a part if he would come to Cape Cod. Halkias immediately understood the assignment.
“I grew up around these blue-collar guys that would really haze you, but also have your back no matter what,” he said. “I’ve met funnier roofers than comedians. I’ve met funnier short-order cooks than comedians. And I wanted to do them justice in a way.”
Unlike some of his other acting jobs, Halkias never worried that he might have blown this one. “It was the easiest job I’ve had, and it was the most fun I’ve had,” he said. “Every other thing I’ve ever done, I’m like, ‘I think I blew it.’ This one, I was like, ‘They’re going to blow it. I’ll be fine.’”
During the conversation, Johnson, Sessa and Halkias also discuss an abandoned “Kitchen Confidential” joke that thankfully never made the film, why Johnson keeps returning to stories about people just before their breakthrough, and the ongoing possibility of more “Nirvanna the Band the Show.” Johnson is careful not to promise anything concrete, but acknowledges there’s still material from the film shoot that could potentially be shaped into a third season. “I would say Kurt and Bobby have a good four months, five months of editing before it’s releasable,” he said, adding that with the series currently enjoying a renewed audience on Hulu, “we’ll see where it goes.”
“Tony” is currently playing in select theaters and expands nationwide on August 21. Watch the full interview below.
Mike DeAngelo is a film writer, podcaster, and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, and beyond. He is the host of The Playlist's podcasts The Discourse and Bingeworthy.
