"It feels somehow shifty and . . . dishonest, making a buck writing,” Anthony Bourdain wrote in his celebrated 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential. “Writing anything is a treason of sorts. Even the cold recitation of facts—which is hardly what I've been up to—is never the thing itself. And the events described are somehow diminished in the telling.”
Bourdain wrote this passage near the end of his book—worrying that he somehow sanitized his rise from dishwasher to master chef (he didn’t)—but he easily could’ve said this about his own biopic, Tony. Matt Johnson’s film about the early life of the chef-turned-TV-host, who died by suicide in 2018, enjoyed nearly widespread critical acclaim in its limited theatrical release earlier this month. It stars The Holdovers’s Dominic Sessa as a teenage Bourdain, along with Antonio Banderas as his chef-mentor and Emilia Jones as his love interest. It debuts in theaters nationwide today.
It’s easy to see why people love Tony: after years of controversial, frenzied biopic-making (Bohemian Rhapsody, King Richard, A Complete Unknown, and countless more), Johnson plates the unseasoned coming-of-age summer romance flick that you’ve seen twenty times already, but most people love anyway. Instead of exploring something, anything about one of the most complicated figures in recent memory, Tony tells a hybrid teen romance/workplace dramedy that craves immunity to criticism about its portrayal of Anthony Bourdain, because it’s hardly even about Anthony Bourdain to begin with. It’s a fitting endpoint to the biopic wars: a movie that is so afraid of capturing its titanic subject that it ceases to be about the man at all.
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It was a beautiful sunny day this past July when I found myself on an expansive, vibrant green lawn in the last place I ever expected one. I was in Downtown Pittsburgh, sandwiched between the city’s skyscrapers and the neighboring Strip District, an old warehouse neighborhood that has been rebuilt with restaurants, shops, galleries, and food stalls. Where I stood had very recently been a parking lot.
Still, it was a perfect place for a park: I wasn’t far from the banks of the Allegheny River, just upstream from where it meets the Monongahela River and the two become the Ohio. If I closed my eyes and threw a ball, odds were it would hit a bridge named for a famous Pittsburgher: the Roberto Clemente Bridge, Andy Warhol Bridge, and Rachel Carson Bridge (known locally as the Three Sisters bridges) all fell within a radius of two city blocks.
This vast, friendly green space is called Arts Landing, and I was visiting with Derek Scalzott, a senior director of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, one of the top performing arts organizations in the country and the developer of the site. “The new Arts Landing is designed to bring people together more frequently for all kinds of artistic experiences,” he explained as we walked by 23 works of art, downtown’s first playground, and the site of this year’s Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, which drew 110,000 visitors. I was incredibly impressed—and surprised. This park? And this arts district? Here?
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Dear Eva,
You roared into our world this winter, seven pounds, two ounces, and with your mother’s eyes, bright blue and shaped like jumbo almonds, searching for something good. Whenever you were awake in the hospital, I stared straight into them, not picturing who you’d be quite yet, just marveling at what you already were, breathing and real. Then as soon as you fell asleep, I’d grab my phone to announce you, to family and friends, to anyone I could think of, really, telling them, This is my daughter, she’s real, she breathes.
When the responses rolled in, many said that when you’re older, Eva, when you understand fear and anxiety, when you can laugh at the universe’s perverse sense of humor, I’d have quite the story to tell you.
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On a recent weeknight, I went out on a date with a girl I had been seeing for a few weeks. We were at a cute little wine bar, and there weren’t many people there, which I liked. She was telling me about an upcoming project from the business she ran with her friends, and I was asking normal questions about it. Then I saw her get uncomfortable, and she said it: “I don’t think we can keep going out.”
“I’m around these friends constantly, for work, all the time,” she said. “You’re eventually going to meet them. We’re going to be at each other’s birthdays. And I just can’t have you around them.”
Why? Because I’m a Trump voter.
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The mama lion shouldn’t be here. The sun is too high, the air is too hot, and she has cubs hiding somewhere in the brush. But there she is anyway, standing casually by the side of the dirt road with Kenya’s Lake Nakuru shimmering in the distance. Although her emergence at this time of day is odd, she looks unbothered. At ease. As if she has no worries whatsoever.
Seems like there should be some kind of playful local term for such a state of mind.
The lioness holds her gaze on our Land Cruiser like a pedestrian waiting for traffic to stop before crossing to the other side. We grind to a halt, raising a small cloud of dust. Faith Musembi, who spent four years working as a producer and director on the new NatGeo documentary series Lion, is the first to spot her prowling through the tall grass. Musembi grew up near Mount Kenya, the peak that gives her country its name, and she has been tracking wildlife in documentaries for her whole professional life. Still, the thrill of seeing a lion prowling in its own natural realm never diminishes. “I know we’re supposed to have a distance, but it’s impossible, because if you love animals, you’re drawn to them,” she says.
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Whether you’re just beginning your watch-buying journey or you’re a seasoned collector, there’s a healthy chance that you have serious respect for one brand: Seiko.
Based in Tokyo, Seiko makes watches and clocks in thousands of styles, colors, complications, and sizes, all at prices that have proven affordable to millions around the world. From soldiers to students to office workers, from athletes to doctors to journalists, people love this brand for its potent mix of affordability, utility, and variety.
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