New Bourdain Movie Admits Tony Was Basically A Kitchen-Wiped Nice Guy Loser

KEY POINTS

•Released August 7 by A24, 'Tony' is a Bourdain biopic focusing on summer 1975 in Provincetown.
•Dominic Sessa plays a young, arrogant, yet insecure Tony who lands a job as a dishwasher.
•Antonio Banderas stars as a fictional mentor chef while the film explores Tony’s early kitchen humiliations.

On August 7, A24 is serving 'Tony,' a biopic about a 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain's scrappy summer dishwashing days in 1975 Provincetown, Massachusetts. Dominic Sessa, fresh off 'The Holdovers,' plays a braggadocious yet insecure Tony who’s described as a 'spoiled, miserable, narcissistic lout' needing an ass-kicking—a glowing handicap no teen role model ever gets. Antonio Banderas lords over this chaotic kitchen like a silent, godly chef-mentor who isn’t in Bourdain’s own stories but sure adds gravitas. The film dashes classic kitchen myths by showing Tony as a run-of-the-mill manipulator more obsessed with oysters that allegedly taste 'like the future' than hero worship. The trailer flounders between foodie cult and average Joe appeal, so college failures take heart: even legends started as kitchen flunkies spouting esoteric words nobody understood.