Although working on the Anthony Bourdain biopic stunk, Antonio Banderas enjoyed the experience.
“We spent a month and a half filming in Cape Cod and Newport, always surrounded by the smell of fish,” he laughed. “Every time I went back to the hotel I had to take a shower because it was absolutely smelly. I was cleaning fish every day!”
Speaking at the Turin Film Festival, Banderas shed new light on Tony, directed by Matt Johnson and produced by A24. The film depicts an aimless young man who turns from a chef to a world traveler.
“After graduating from college,[Bourdin]originally wanted to be a writer,” Banderas said. “But soon he began to suffer from depression and drug addiction, so this film depicts a very difficult early period in his life.”
Banderas plays a Brazilian-born restaurateur who takes care of young Tony, played by “The Holdovers” star Dominick Sessa. “Through this relationship, Tony really begins to learn how to cook,” he said. “So this film is not just about cooking and cooking techniques, but about his life, his identity, and his way of life as shaped by this unique mentor.”
While the real Bourdain started out as a dishwasher at a restaurant run by Provincetown mainstay Ciro Cozzi, Banderas’ mentor is a rather complex figure. He described the character as “a man from Brazil who has worked in the United States and traveled all over the world.”
“My character studied at the best institutions and graduated from the best gastronomic schools, but he was always an outsider,” Banderas added. “He established his own restaurant outside the traditional world of elite chefs and developed his own cuisine using ingredients available in the ordinary community – simple dishes for everyday people.”
Banderas and Turin’s artistic director Giulio Base
In fact, Banderas valued his mentors so much that he received a Lifetime Achievement Award during his time in Turin, even going so far as to say that his career was the product of a chance encounter.
“I’m a stage actor,” he explained. “Thanks to Pedro Almodovar, cinema was born by chance. It was a ‘coincidence’ that led to 130 films, but still, it was a coincidence. Theater was my first love. For the last seven or eight years, I have returned to my home in Málaga, and to my real home on the stage. My life has changed, and now I am finally doing what my life’s project was always intended to do.”
Another figure who shaped Banderas’ life is actor Paul Newman, whose piercing blue eyes stare from festival posters and who is the subject of a 24-film retrospective at this year’s Turin Film Festival.
“I worked in New York for a year doing musicals,” Banderas recalls. “One day I was on stage singing, and at one point I saw Paul Newman looking at me with those eyes. I completely froze. It was incredibly powerful. We made a few movies together, and I worked with his wife, Joanne Woodward, on ‘Philadelphia.'” He liked me, so we used to go out to dinner in New York. He had strange habits. I always ask for a specific beer and tell the waiter, “Please bring me another beer in exactly 2 minutes and 45 seconds!” I still think about it. ”
