“TONY” and The Purpose of The Biopic

So the news broke: A24 is circling a new biopic called, TONY, based on the life of celebrity Chef and writer, Anthony Bourdain.

My immediate reaction: blah.

It was inevitable, I suppose. Bourdain’s life contained multitudes. His rags-to-riches story; his gifts as a writer and orator; his candor about a life fully-lived, along with all the inner turmoil that permeates his texts.

This is the stuff of Hollywood story-telling. A cursory look at the history of movies will reveal that audiences love one thing more than anything: A good, old-fashioned fairy tale. Not the kind that we tell our children, but the kind that exist all around us.

PATCH ADAMS, FREEDOM WRITERS, REMEMBER THE TITANS, JUST MERCY. These are real stories about trials and tribulation.

Quotable and imminently re-watchable, these movies carry concise stories that communicate struggle in the 1st act, invoke drama in the 2nd act, then wrap up neatly in the 3rd.

Note that what ties all these particular films together is the general obscurity of their subjects. PATCH ADAMS is loosely based on the life of Hunter Adams, a physician known for bringing joy to patients with his clown routine.

In fact, unless you were personally treated by Dr. Adams or got your hands on his writings, your first introduction would have been through the veil of Robin William’s eccentric, classic turn. His is a character meant to invoke hope and levity in the face of our shared mortality.

REMEMBER THE TITANS is ostensibly a movie about high-school football. But digging deeper will reveal a tale about the dark history of racism, and the perseverance of a few sports hopefuls. The football story keeps us in attention, but the overarching race theme presents the lesson.

This, ostensibly, is the purpose of Hollywood bio-pic spanning all the way back to THE GLENN MILLER STORY, THE GREAT WALTZ, AND THE DIVNE LADY, back in the early days of the 20th century.

And in there, lies my feelings of unease with TONY. Anthony Bourdain’s life has been so well-documented — from beginning to tragic end — that you’re left asking: What is there to left to illuminate? What is there to say that wasn’t already said by the man, himself?

There are hundreds of hours of footage from No Reservation and Parts Unknown to sink your teeth into. The man has waxed poetic about his culinary exploits on a dozen other popular, well-established, t.v programs that echo this same sentiment. Even his controversies have been well-documented.

Cookbooks have been concocted with his blessing. Recipes, published. Myriad books have been written from the rafters — from writers who operated in Bourdain’s orbit. Again, What is the angle?

There are scores of us that feel the same, but maybe we’re warped. Perhaps we’ve read one too many of Chef Bourdain’s books, the wafting fumes of our old, tattered books have left us high, blinded to the film’s possibilities.

Let’s look at the bright side. A24 is circling the production package helmed by Canadian filmmaker, Matt Johnson. Johnson has recently directed the critical indie darling, BLACKBERRY, about the rise and fall of the mobile telephone giant of the early-aughts.

BLACKBERRY is an incredibly entertaining, off-the-cuff production with incredible performances from Jay Baruchel known for THIS IS THE END, and Glenn Howerton of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” fame.

Often times, bio-pics frame their subjects as black-and-white idealists. They are all morally good, hard working citizens who’s only plight is that of external forces keeping them from personal success. It is the world, ultimately, that keeps them from achieving their goals.

Johnson and company have done an amazing job on BLACKBERRY of subverting this expectation. Yes, it is a film about a ragtag group of engineers who have revolutionized phones for the better. But also, yes! this same ragtag group of tech pirates are made up of dick-heads and money-hungry trolls.

It’s all there, and nuanced in a way that breathes new life into the stuffy Biopic formula that still wreaks havoc in todays movies.

One hopes that TONY will receive this same level of nuance. Given the relative young age of THE HOLDOVERS star, Dominic Sessa, it’s fair to assume this will take place during the hectic, early days of Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain’s smash-hit freshman book.

The talent is certainly there. Let’s just hope the project is mindful of the man’s complexities.