Let's Talk About 'Tony'

Dear Pros,

You've got Kat this week, and if I were a betting woman, I'd wager that you've either seen the film Tony already, or have plans to do so in the near future. A few weeks ago, I had a chance to watch it in the company of industry pros at a screening that Food & Wine held with the production company A24. I almost chickened out.

I told myself that I was being a thoughtful host, making sure all the guests had seats before taking one myself, but the truth is that I was afraid. Like many people, I knew Anthony Bourdain. Not nearly as well as some of my friends who worked for or with him, or were woven into his home life, but over the years, we developed a quiet trust and solidarity. We would gut-check tough things, dork out about Las Vegas, and try our best to hide in the corner at parties, in part because I think — or at least I hope — I provided him a safe space where he didn't have to perform the character of Anthony Bourdain. I really liked him, and I will never stop being sad and angry that he's gone.

In the years since his death, Bourdain has become something other than mortal in the public consciousness. He's either been elevated to sainthood (which I suspect he would find at hilarious odds with his cultivated public persona) or held up as a processional giant, puppeteered by whoever wished their thoughts to be spoken by his effigy. "Well, Tony would think…" Nope. There are only a few people in the world qualified to correctly posit such a thing, and they're generally not the ones out there using his avatar as an amplifier. And frankly, watching the documentaries about him — both sanctioned and not — makes me sad, so I avoid them.

I was standing in the theater lobby of San Vicente (the club where we held the screening), debating whether I was going to slink out or stay, when Tracy Westmoreland walked in to find his seat. I'd met him in 2000 at his bar, the legendarily scuzzy Siberia, located underground in the New York City subway, and which Bourdain called "My favorite bar on Earth." It was the same night I saw Bourdain in person for the first time at a party for his new book Kitchen Confidential, towering and grinning above a throng of friends and barflies — before the fans, fame, and infamy. If he could walk into this screening of Tony, so could I.

At a party between the early and late screenings, I walked up to Westmoreland, re-introduced myself, and we hunkered in the corner, discussing the strange pang of seeing our friend fictionalized onscreen. He'd walked out of the posthumous Bourdain documentary film Roadrunner, he told me — it was too much. I told him that I couldn't even go see it in the first place.

You will make your own decisions when you see Tony, but when I reconnected with Westmoreland in the lobby afterward, the two of us hugged, tear-stained and barely able to speak. This film, based on stories from his summers working in restaurants in Provincetown, Massachusetts, portrays the teenaged Bourdain as a messy, mouthy, swaggering, vulnerable, and eminently kind kid, trying to find his footing in the world while constantly tripping over the hazards of impending adulthood. It is beautifully human, and it breaks my heart.

In my Tinfoil Swans podcast episode airing this Tuesday, restaurateur and writer Eli Sussman and I spoke about the time he spent with actor Dominic Sessa, training him to embody the kind of chef Bourdain both loved and was. My wonderful colleague, Merlyn Miller, spoke with Sessa, as well as the film's writers, Lou Howe and Todd Bartels, about their process for crafting a script that felt true to the actual man, rather than the cultural icon he's become.

After you see Tony, I'd feel really lucky if you took the time to share your impressions of it with me at the email address below, or via Instagram DM. We might include it in a future F&W Pro mailbag. You could also just meet me at Siberia (now located in a different subway station) and share your thoughts in person. I have no idea what Bourdain would make of it all, but I know it would make me smile.

Cheers,
Kat