Two years ago, A24 announced plans for Tony, a biopic about a single summer in the life of the late Anthony Bourdain. Predictably, a vocal contingent of his fans (or at least the extremely online ones) declared, “Tony would’ve hated this,” with absolute conviction, as if they’d just been ripping Marlboros and downing negronis with the man himself.
Would he have hated it? I didn’t know the answer, and for a while, I put the question, and the film, out of my mind. When working as Tony’s assistant, a job I started in 2009, I quickly learned not to predict his responses to the many queries that came to him through me.
He was often more than happy to do interviews with people whose viewpoints he adamantly opposed. He jumped at the opportunity to appear on Yo Gabba Gabba, a show aimed at toddlers. When Vogue magazine asked him to sit for a fashion shoot, I was certain he’d roll his eyes, but he said to me, “For reasons of overweening vanity, I’m eager to do it,” before rattling off a list of designers he admired.
I’d consulted for Roadrunner, the 2021 Bourdain documentary, but had no involvement with the A24 biopic. While the film was shot and edited, I stayed busy with Care and Feeding, my 2025 memoir in which I address the weird privilege of living and working in Tony’s massive shadow, both while he was alive and after his death in 2018.
With me are the many talented people who cooked with him, helped make his TV shows, and published his writing. Tony’s brother, Chris Bourdain, lives in that shadow, too.
“My younger brother, Chris, is about as different from me as anyone can be,” Tony wrote in his 2001 book A Cook’s Tour. “While I’ve spent my whole life living a hand-to-mouth existence, paycheck to paycheck, letting the good times roll, not giving a fuck … Chris has always been the responsible one, the good son.”
