{"id":33087,"date":"2026-08-08T19:44:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T14:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=33087"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:44:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T14:44:43","slug":"tony-whats-fact-and-whats-fiction-in-the-anthony-bourdain-origin-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=33087","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Tony\u2019: What\u2019s Fact and What\u2019s Fiction in the Anthony Bourdain Origin Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"has-dropcap body dropcap\">\u201cEssentially, I treated the world as my ashtray,\u201d Anthony Bourdain wrote in his bestselling 2000 memoir <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/1398738\/anthony-bourdain-first-job-food-industry-provincetown\/\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/1398738\/anthony-bourdain-first-job-food-industry-provincetown\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tastingtable.com\/1398738\/anthony-bourdain-first-job-food-industry-provincetown\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Kitchen Confidential<\/em><\/a>, the book that would eventually spur his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/style\/2021\/09\/anthony-bourdain-director-producer-exclusive-excerpt\" class=\"text link\">television career<\/a>. \u201cRudderless and unhappy, I went in with some friends on a summer share in Provincetown, Cape Cod.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That exact summer\u2014actually, a heavily fictionalized version of it\u2014is the focus of <em>Tony<\/em>, a new A24 film starring <em>The Holdovers<\/em> breakout <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/story\/dominic-sessa-became-anthony-bourdain\" class=\"text link\">Dominic Sessa<\/a> as a 19-year-old Bourdain. In <em>Kitchen Confidential<\/em>, Bourdain describes his college-age self as \u201cspoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, and thoughtless.\u201d <em>Tony<\/em> uses that line as an epigraph, setting up a story about Bourdain following his high school crush Nancy (Emilia Jones) to Provincetown in hopes of wooing her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">In real life, a young Bourdain found much more than romance in Ptown. \u201cI left Provincetown with restaurant experience, a suntan, and an ever-deepening relationship with recreational drugs,\u201d Bourdain said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zBOusd1DN9M\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">2014 episode<\/a> of <em>Parts Unknown<\/em>. \u201cI went to culinary school, then to New York City, and never returned.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Only a scant portion of <em>Kitchen Confidential<\/em> covers this time in Bourdain\u2019s life. <em>Tony<\/em> sets out to capture Bourdain\u2019s reckless summer on the coast more fully, though it\u2019s certainly not a documentary. Director Matt Johnson and co-screenwriters Todd Bartels and Lou Howe cared most about getting the \u201cvibe\u201d of a young Bourdain right; the rest was up for creative license.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cWhen we were first thinking about Bourdain as a subject, it felt like there were three options for windows [into his life],\u201d Howe tells <em>Vanity Fair.<\/em> The team had no interest in a traditional \u201ccradle to grave\u201d biopic; they also didn\u2019t want to make a movie about his time <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/style\/2021\/07\/bourdain-my-camera-and-me\" class=\"text link\">working as a chef in New York<\/a>. \u201cWe really thought that Tony deserved a movie that is as dynamic and entertaining as he was. The question of how that little shit became this sort of guru-like beacon of curiosity really drove us towards Provincetown. Everyone we met there who had spent time in the \u201970s talked about how special and weird and magical those times were, so just being there really solidified that choice of, \u2018We want to see how this angry little punk started to figure out the path towards enlightenment.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">So they settled on making a film focused on one meaningful slice of Bourdain\u2019s life. <em>Tony<\/em> is \u201ca coming-of-age movie, a romance movie, a mentorship, a friendship, a \u2018pirate ship\u2019 movie,\u201d says Bartels. (Bourdain loved to liken kitchen staff to a ragtag nautical crew.) \u201cWe were writing a love letter to Anthony Bourdain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Bourdain <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/hollywood\/2018\/06\/anthony-bourdain-obituary\" class=\"text link\">died by suicide<\/a> at the age of 61 on June 8, 2018, while filming an episode of his CNN series <em>Parts Unknown<\/em> in France. His prolific television career and various books gave <em>Tony<\/em>\u2019s team some source material. But his larger-than-life legacy also inspired them to take certain liberties, with the permission of Bourdain\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cEssentially, I treated the world as my ashtray,\u201d Anthony Bourdain wrote in his bestselling 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential, the book that would eventually spur his television career. \u201cRudderless and unhappy, I went in with some friends on a summer share in Provincetown, Cape Cod.\u201d That exact summer\u2014actually, a heavily fictionalized version of it\u2014is the focus&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a74a9df04870643beff6490\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/MCDTONY_EC016.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}