‘Tony’ Director Matt Johnson on Internet Fandom and Why He’s Always Wearing Those Sweatpants

Tony Director Matt Johnson on Telling Young Anthony Bourdain’s Story, Internet Fandom, and Why He’s Always Wearing Those SweatpantsThe breakout filmmaker also gives updates on his upcoming Magic: The Gathering movie and when we’ll see a third season of Nirvanna the Band the Show.R.J. Johnston / Getty Images, GQMatt Johnson smiles wistfully when I bring up our shared hometown of Toronto. I’d just told him about this Instagram Reel in which a guy rattles off all the generational talent that’s emerged from Southern Ontario: James Cameron! Lorne Michaels! Jim Carrey! Shai Gilgeous-Alexander! Drake, Bieber, The Weeknd! The video was a little corny, sure, but it still made me want to run through a wall.Anyway, I mentioned it to Johnson, the 40-year-old director behind A24’s much-anticipated Anthony Bourdain biopic, Tony, because I was curious if he could explain the secret sauce behind this surplus of local kids made good—Johnson himself included. “Ontario was just behind America enough,” he theorizes, “that we tried to copy things like MTV and independent television, and we did it in a kind of ramshackle, ersatz way.”Johnson is in the midst of a breakout year on this side of the border. All of his projects—from 2023’s Blackberry, the Social Network–lite docudrama that put him on the Hollywood map, to February’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, the feature adaptation of his long-running cult comedy series about two harebrained musicians desperately trying to book a show at a local venue—boast scrappy, gonzo energy in spades, tilting familiar tropes a few degrees off-kilter. With Tony, which stars Dominic Sessa in the lead role, Johnson applies that formula to the coming-of-age film, injecting the genre with no shortage of subversive humor and genuine heart. (There was a lot of pressure on Tony from a legion of skeptical Bourdain fans, myself included, but Johnson’s movie is a rip-roaring, non-hagiographic good time.)In the wake of his two buzzy 2026 movies, Johnson is staying busy. He directed comedian and Tony actor Stavros Halkias’s upcoming Netflix special Uncle Stav. He’s developing a Toronto crime movie starring Finn Wolfhard for Neon, as well as a TSA comedy with Josh Safdie for A24. And he’s currently hard at work on a live-action Magic: The Gathering feature, while also chasing down a green light for the long-awaited third season of Nirvanna the Band the Show.Ahead of Tony’s release—Friday in New York and LA and nationwide on August 21st—Johnson and I got into the status of those other two projects, how making this biopic pushed him as a filmmaker, and the weirdness of suddenly finding himself a main character on the internet.Johnson and Sessa on the set of Tony. Courtesy of A24GQ: A lot of people have a parasocial relationship with Anthony Bourdain, and the very idea of a biopic about him makes them nervous. How did you contend with that built-in level of expectation when making this film?Matt Johnson: One of Dom’s and my real secrets, that we didn’t even know was a tool for us, was that neither of us had literally any baggage around this guy. I mean, zero. I don’t want this term to come off as cynical or negative, but we both had a strident lack of interest in Anthony Bourdain. He wasn’t a role model to either of us. And because we didn’t view him as a role model, it let us look at the character as somebody who could be influenced by other men.Because that’s something that Dom and I were both very, very interested in. Him coming from hockey and me coming from a kind of summer camp Ontario culture where a lot of what he and I credited to the way that we were had to do with role models, specifically slightly older guys that we would be hanging out with. And it was that that we sort of centered the movie around. We were like, “Okay, so who were this guy’s role models? How can we interrogate that together in ways that feel honest to us?” We formed the whole movie around that central idea: Everybody has a notion of Anthony Bourdain. But why don’t you and I try to figure out why he is the way that he is? Because we both believed, really, that you owe so much of your personality and who you are to your role models and the people who you look up to, for better or worse.Prior to that, though, having not had much familiarity with Bourdain, how did you land on this as a story that you wanted to tell?I get pitched different projects all the time, and like many things in Hollywood, because I’d made Blackberry, I was getting inundated with real-life stories, biographies—specifically tech biographies, biographies of companies, movies that were in the same space as Blackberry. Take something real and do it in whatever my style is. And so this was one of those projects, and I was totally uninterested. I said no to this in the same way I had said no to two or three dozen other similarly situated projects.Dom and I were meeting just to see if there was a project we could do together. We were together for two hours, maybe more. But my producer and co-writer, Matt Miller, was also there, and we left that lunch being like, “Oh, well, this Bourdain project can be the project that I wanted to do with Dom. We can mold it around this idea.”So by the first time you met Dom, had you read the Provincetown chapters in Kitchen Confidential that inspired the movie?I only knew the story superficially, that he had started this way. The thing that I was attracted to was the idea that this guy did not initially want to be a chef. So I knew that much, and it was then that I was like, “Okay, I should really take this guy’s life seriously.” And from there, I went and basically read everything. I didn’t watch all of his TV shows, because I was less interested in the adult persona and much more about what he said about his own life. And I read some really, really great books. I read an amazing unofficial biography that I found hugely interesting. It’s by a guy named Charles Leerhsen, and it’s called Down and Out in Paradise. It’s a bit pop in the sense that it is trying to be scandalous in a way, but what this guy had that I couldn’t find anywhere else was tons of interviews with the people who were around when Bourdain was young.And that’s the approach I took in my own research. I moved to Provincetown and was just like, “I better just meet the people who are still around who knew him.” And it was the concert of that and Dom’s and my shared interest in this guy creating himself that really formed the foundation of the movie.Having gone through that whole process of doing the research and interviewing people who knew him and making the film, what is the sense of this person that you’re left with?I got to pick my words carefully here, because it could come off as me talking down on this guy when I actually mean it to be the exact opposite. Anthony Bourdain, I think, was much more vulnerable and wounded and insecure than how people perceived him. He had a kind of unflappability that people were really drawn to, but my sense was that he was much more vulnerable than you would imagine. And that really was his superpower.Was there anything you guys did to help foster the camaraderie among the crew? It’s really palpable in the kitchen scenes—just how real it feels with everyone going at each other, but in a genuine loving sort of way.I cast people I liked, and I think that everybody understood that. Every single thespian in that group—Stavros included, if you think about his onstage experience—these were people who were not nervous or finding their feet. Everybody was great, and everybody understood this was Dom’s movie. And so I think that created a natural feeling of “We’re all in this together,” because we were trying to not only support Dom as the center of this film, but really give him great places to go, give him amazing things to react to, because the setup of the film is simple.Everybody just gave 110%, literally everybody. I mean, you talked to Stav—Stav, I’m sure is in some ways quite mockish about it, but even he showed up day one, knew everything, knew all of his lines. Could just do it, would shoot all day in this sweaty little kitchen in the middle of Cape Cod. Everybody had an amazing attitude.Johnson and Sessa on the set of Tony. Courtesy of A24As someone who had no connection to Anthony Bourdain really, what do you hope that his legions of fans take away from the movie?That, again, is hard because I can’t answer that about any of my films. I hope that people watch them and take something from them that can help them. And I mean that so literally. I hope that any of my films, people can watch them and be like, “Ah, this movie’s going to help me somehow.” Even if they don’t realize it.But I will say what I took to be the message of Anthony Bourdain’s life, one of the reasons that people find him so magnetic, and it has less to do with the way that he is, the way that he acts, or even what he did. I think that this movie and Bourdain both tell us that wherever you are, it’s not too late. Anthony Bourdain becomes famous in his mid-40s after living a life of derelict drug addiction.The message of Dante’s Inferno is you have to go down to go up. And I think that that’s an extremely useful message that culturally at the moment has been kind of forgotten in the kind of safetyism, never-get-hurt, never-be-embarrassed, never-make-a-mistake world that we all feel as though we live in. And I think that Bourdain’s life is an emblem of you need to go out and get hurt so that you can become the great person that you’re meant to be. And it’s something that both Dom and I feel deeply, that it is in the mistakes that you’re made and not in the right decisions.If people get even a glimpse of that, that’s great. But I never ascribe meaning to my own movies, because I don’t even know. People might watch this movie and take the exact opposite from it. But I know at the end of the film, I get a feeling of, “Oh, okay, I can overcome my faults, my flaws, and my sins to enter a new me.” And we all have that opportunity, even if we forget that sometimes.I would be remiss if I didn’t ask if there’s anything at all you could share about how the Magic: The Gathering movie is going.It’s going amazing. It is, in true Bourdain fashion, a kind of unbelievable miracle that I specifically would get to do that at this stage in my career, because my own personal story is that I was desperate to become a professional Magic card player. That’s all I wanted.And I gave it up because I was like, “I’m just not good enough. I will never be able to do this.” So to be handed something like this is an act of irony that I’m so grateful for. How’s it going? Going great. The Magic: The Gathering artists are currently drawing storyboards for the movie, and it’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen.With both Blackberry and Tony, you’ve mentioned how helpful it was to have no real personal connection to the subject matter.Yes, hugely.But I’m curious now that you’re making Magic, something that you’re very passionate about—I was waiting for somebody to ask me this. Look, don’t think that I wasn’t aware I was creating my own antithesis as the words left my mouth. I went, “Wait a minute, but I am about to make a movie about something that I understand so deeply and in some ways am obsessed with.” And I will tell you, as a writer, that the only thing I can add to this is that Magic: The Gathering generally is known as a system of rules. Even though there is a lore and there is a world that people are very, very dedicated to—and I’m one of those people—it is so unbelievably expansive that I don’t think you are going to find one person who has a unified “This is what the Magic world is to me.” In fact, I think it’s one of the reasons why it’s been 30 years and they haven’t made a movie. They haven’t made a television show. It’s because it is so many different things all at once.Really what unifies it is this brilliant mathematical system that Richard Garfield invented, which is just the ultimate card gaming system. Strangely, because my time as a Magic card obsessive really occurs between 1996 and about 2007, 2008, I’m able to play both sides of this—where I have a limited understanding of all of it but an expert level of appreciation and obsession about a tiny little window of it. And so I’m getting to be both a neophyte to all of this stuff and somebody who has a very clear understanding of a piece of it at the same time. But it is to be determined—you and I are going to talk about it in whatever, two years, a year and a half. We’ll see if I made a big mistake.I’m sure it’s going to be brilliant. So the other new project that was just announced was you’re working with Josh Safdie on something related to the TSA…That’s an old, old project.Oh, really?Yeah. He and I were working on it when I met Dominic Sessa. I think that’s why it got catapulted into the news, because I was being interviewed about how I met Dom. And the context around it was I was going to New York quite often to meet with Josh and his partner, Ronnie Bronstein, because we were developing this TSA comedy. It was on one of those trips that I met with Dom and decided to make this Bourdain movie. And it’s all tangled up, because the TSA movie was also for A24, but they decided, “No, no, no, you’re going to make this Anthony Bourdain movie right away.” And so they swapped the order. The TSA movie is still something I’m very excited to make, but when exactly I’ll do it, I don’t have an answer.So between the Nirvanna movie and Tony, you’re having something of a breakout year. And then there’s this whole thing on social media happening, where you’ve become a sort of internet boyfriend—It’s funny, you’re the second person who’s told me this in two days, yeah. And I have to admit that because I have no social media…my intuition is that a good 50% of what you may be seeing is—and I’m not trying to be self-flagellating here—I think it may be a mockery or a joke. I don’t want to take it to the level of “They’re making fun of me,” but there’s a novel weirdness around it, because I’m such an outside-the-box media personality. I have to attribute a huge amount of it to that. All I’m saying is don’t take it too seriously.I guess in a more general sense then, in terms of this moment you’re having, how has it felt to be at the center of all this attention and buzz?It’s so not the sexy answer, but I felt like I went through this after Blackberry. Because the executives in Hollywood, for all of the criticism they get, are pretty clairvoyant in a lot of ways. They always seem to be a good two, three years ahead of the culture. And it was then that I was experiencing a massive influx of offers and attention from people who are like, “Will you make this movie? Will you make this movie?” And from my perspective, that actually hasn’t modified much since 2023. So how does it feel to be getting more attention? I guess the way to boil it down is opportunities.But I want to put it in perspective. I think from a broad-audience-appeal filmmaking point of view, Blackberry still remains a much bigger “success” than Nirvanna the Band the Show. Much bigger. I think that from the perspective of a studio head working in Los Angeles wondering who’s going to make the next Magic: The Gathering, et cetera, I think that Nirvanna the Band factors exactly nil into that decision.Stephane Cardinale/Getty ImagesHere at GQ, we of course think about men’s style a lot. And that’s been another element in the internet’s obsession with you of late: Both as your fictional self in Nirvanna and in real life, you seem to be something of a uniform dresser, and I’m wondering if you can speak to your approach to personal style and whether it’s something that’s important to you.It’s funny because of course the answer is yes. But it’s important to me because what I’m trying to project is an approachability that is the opposite of what the filmmakers I saw when I was young represented. And I don’t think they’re wrong to do that. When you’re young, you look at somebody like Wes Anderson, and you go, “Oh, well, I could never be that. This guy has just walked out of the pages of The New Yorker.” And there’s a…I don’t want to call it elitism, because I actually appreciate it and I really do love men’s fashion.Men who dress well, that is a triumph. I think if I’m trying to tell a story with the way that I dress, it is that you, whoever you are, can be me, right? There’s nothing about me that’s unattainable to you. So I’m trying to not have things like my clothes and my style and the way that I comport myself be a distancing tool.And a huge part of my life is about exercise. I need to dress in a way where I can go to the gym basically anytime I have a free moment. Those two things collided with one another to create me wearing the same style of...I mean, I have about 20 pairs of those sweatpants and a hundred of those same shirts, one of which I’m wearing right now. And I like that. I like that when I put on my clothes in the morning, it’s not a decision that I’m needing to make that is trying to express something specific. It’s funny, though, because of course it’s a disguise. “What you see is what you get” is a trick that all my movies are playing, including Tony, where you think you’re seeing something but it must not be that way. And yeah, I take some pleasure in people thinking that I’m stupid and I don’t care. It’s a good place for me to be.I know that you and Jay McCarroll have been working very hard to release Nirvanna season three, which you’ve already filmed big chunks of over the years. The first two seasons are now, as of a couple weeks ago, finally streaming on Hulu in the States and Disney+ in Canada. How close are we really to that happening now?It seems like we’re getting closer every single day. Three months ago, it would’ve been impossible to even imagine Nirvanna the Band being released on Disney+. Like impossible. It seems as though season three is going to be imminently released. But at least now we have a direct line, and Disney and Hulu or another streamer is going to need to say, “We are so happy with this. Can we have the third season?” And then we’re good. We’ve never been closer, I will only say that. But I am on bated breath and have no idea which way the wind is blowing. About a year ago, I needed to stop being so plugged into the daily discussion of “How is the show going to come out? How are we going to release the show?” Because it’s too much of a roller coaster to be on. Now, I wait with bated breath like you to be able to release what we did.And it’s going to be such a trip, because now season three is going to have natural elements of the movie. Because enough time has passed, and there are things that we kept shooting as the years went on. A huge section of the first version of the movie [that we scrapped] is a part of season three of the show. So yeah, I can’t wait.Sign up for Manual to receive useful advice on style, health, and more, five days a week.Yang-Yi Goh is GQ’s Senior Style Editor. Since joining the magazine in 2019, he has interviewed pro athletes, profiled movie stars, received hate mail for his opinions on sneakers, and written approximately fifty gazillion lists of the best suits, shirts, socks, pants, jewelry, sunglasses, hoodies…you get the idea. Prior to ... Read More