The other week, it was reported that A24 is “circling” a movie on the late chef and TV host Anthony Bourdain. Titled Tony, the movie is set to be directed by Matt Johnson — who made last year’s BlackBerry — and to star Dominic Sessa, who broke through last year in The Holdovers.
It’s unclear if the movie would be adapted from any particular book or article, of which there have been quite a few about Bourdain. It would likely have to come with the approval of his estate.
Anthony Bourdain’s life is fascinating and absolutely worthy of a movie. He was a famous chef in New York City and elsewhere throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, battled drug addiction, and then, in 2000, wrote a bestselling book called Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.
The book was a combination memoir, and collection of tips and revelations about the restaurant world. It also marked a pivot for Bourdain ― essentially, from that point forward, he was no longer a professional chef but a media figure.
He started hosting TV shows, first A Cook’s Tour, then No Reservations (and side projects like Layover), and later Parts Unknown, after he switched to CNN. The shows featured Bourdain going almost everywhere in the world, eating the food, meeting the people, and exploring the culture and history ― always accompanied by beautiful cinematography and first-rate production values.
Bourdain died of suicide in the summer of 2018, at the age of 61, amidst a tumultuous romance with actress Asia Argento. A nearly universally beloved figure, Bourdain was remembered as a great writer, chef, and TV host. He also had a memorable cameo in The Big Short, as himself:
Kitchen Confidential: The Movie
There could be a straight adaptation of his memoir Kitchen Confidential, dramatizing some of the great stories in that book (my personal favorite is when Bourdain went to work for a restaurant financed by mobsters and “had a lot of meetings in cars”).
There actually was already a Kitchen Confidential adaptation. It was made into a Fox sitcom, that debuted in 2005 and lasted just 13 episodes. It starred Bradley Cooper, who was still mostly pre-fame at the time, as the Bourdain character.
It was too early for three different reasons: It arrived before either Cooper or Bourdain was as famous as they would become later, and was a behind-the-scenes-at-a-restaurant show that arrived two decades before The Bear.
Kitchen Confidential, great as it is, would unfortunately leave out Bourdain’s entire TV career.
Adapting Roadrunner
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was a documentary that arrived in 2021. It mostly left out his pre-Kitchen Confidential career, focusing on his years in TV, especially the end of his life.
Directed by the prolific Morgan Neville, the film was mainly well-received, with two exceptions: its use of AI technology, without advanced disclosure, for some scenes using Bourdain’s voice and the somewhat mean-spirited way it treated Asia Argento.
I’m not sure that adapting this documentary is the way to go, for those reasons, but there’s also no indication that that’s what’s planned.
Adapting Down and Out in Paradise
The first major posthumous biography of Bourdain was Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain, authored by author Charles Leerhsen, which came out in 2022. (Fun fact: Leerhsen, many years ago, once interviewed me for a job.)
The book was very much a warts-and-all portrayal of Bourdain, especially critical of the subject’s behavior during his time with Argento. Most notably, it depicts him presenting himself as a #MeToo activist, while at the same time seeking to suppress allegations against Argento by a young man who accused her of sexual misconduct.
His family, needless to say, would probably not want this book to serve as source material.
Something Else
Most likely, the Anthony Bourdain movie will come from some original screenplay. If the director’s BlackBerry is any indication, it won’t be worried about stepping on toes. I don’t know what form it might take, but there are many options, from which part of Bourdain’s life to focus on, to how to tell the story narratively.
