Alexander Payne

On the surface, Tony is kind of like a Holdovers-esque tale detailing an altogether different time in Bourdain's life.

In fact, it features the star of that Alexander Payne film as it happens, the brilliant Dominic Sessa.

It depicts a teenage version of Anthony, then going by Tony, who's caught up in a number of lies when we meet him.

There are lies to other people about the upward trajectory of his career as this hotshot fiction writer.

Mm

...

Alexander Payne and Hal Ashby, like these heroes of ours, and, um, exactly, you know, the sort of lovable rascal, uh, kind of coming-of-age tale is exactly what we're trying to do.

And-

Okay, so this movie has three people working on the screenplay.

One of them is Alexander Payne, which I'm hoping you have discovered some kind of excuse for his involvement in this.

But it is directed by Dennis Dugan for the year 2007.

And this movie is about two straight single Brooklyn firefighters.

But the movie, of course, never goes anywhere interesting like that because it is so surface level.

It is, yeah.

And it betrays its long and tortured development in history because I could not understand how Alexander Payne was in the credits.

I literally did a spit take when I saw it.

Oh, wow

... we loved Alexander Payne.

And, uh, my girlfriend, I remember the girlfriend I saw it with because she loved the, um, the part where Laura Dern yells out, "At least I wouldn't have had to suck your boyfriend's cock." I just remember her laughing.

Like, we would just...

Mm-hmm.

And it does have that, you know...

South Park is a sort of satire in the classical sense, as I said, and I think Alexander Payne's vision is a little bit more like these are everyday people, just a little bit exaggerated.

Yes.

I watched Citizen Ruth last night.

Alexander Payne's first film.

I've been meaning to watch that.

It's pretty good.

Like, she looks super young in this movie.

I don't know what it is.

it's good it's you could tell alexander payne was just sort of like getting his way about him i would give it probably a low jim maybe jim just because i like alexander payne and his and his style and his vibes it was pretty funny he didn't really like in his career he's not one of these guys who like tackles issues and with stuff you know his themes are more of like life slice of life type

And it was just, it was basically...

We should watch it.

But I think it was written by Alexander Payne, who wrote, like, Sideways and, like, R- uh, Citizen Ruth and, like-

Ooh

... all those movies.

And now he's made Tony, starring Dominic Sessa as a young Anthony Bourdain, the famous chef, author, and travel show guy.

Sessa was fantastic a couple of years back in his debut movie, The Holdovers, an Alexander Payne movie starring him and Paul GM.

I'll admit I was aware of Anthony Bourdain and had a broad sense of what he was like, but I've never seen any of his shows before or read his books.

I probably mostly just saw internet posts about him with quotes and memes, things like that.