‘Tony’ Makes Bourdain Unlikeable, and That’s Why It Works

I went into Tony, Matt Johnson’s new Anthony Bourdain biopic, as I imagine many people in the food world did: hesitant and somewhat hoping to hate it, by virtue of my aversion to the way the chef has been mythologized in the eight years since his death. While I think Laurie Woolever, Bourdain’s longtime assistant and author of a 2021 oral biography, is one of the rare people who’s earned the right to tell his story, I’ve found many other attempts to take advantage of the chef’s name and reputation lurid and unnecessary.