Before Anthony Bourdain became the unmistakable voice, world traveller and cultural figure audiences came to know, he was a restless 19-year-old trying to work out where he belonged. Matt Johnson’s Tony captures that formative summer in Provincetown, where an unexpected introduction to the chaotic world of restaurant kitchens would quietly set his life on an entirely new course.
For composer Jay McCarrol, that meant resisting the temptation to musically foreshadow the larger-than-life figure waiting in Bourdain’s future. Instead, his score stays firmly inside the uncertainty, anger and darkness of the young man in front of us – the “first rumblings” of a storm still to come. Built from low upright piano, accordion, harmonium and textures that evoke “rust and worn wood,” McCarrol’s maritime-inflected score provides an intimate counterpoint to the film’s raucous humour and energetic needle drops.
Speaking with our Peter Gray, McCarrol discussed finding the musical language of a Bourdain who had yet to find his own voice, scoring the sudden optimism of a life-changing summer, and how years of friendship with Johnson have created a creative shorthand between director and composer.
Congratulations on the film. I was really taken aback by how funny it is, but what I found beautiful is that we know who Tony is going to become, while he has no idea. When you’re scoring someone with that future hanging over them, how much are you composing for the 19-year-old in the moment, and how much do you allow the ghost of the man we know to exist in the music?
You said it. I tried to make it sound like the storm is coming, and these are just the first rumblings of what he’s going to become. I wasn’t trying to represent the huge, dynamic man or world traveller he would eventually be. I wanted to be very present with where he was that summer.
The first time he hears his own theme is in his childhood bedroom, when he’s angrily reminded that he’s still a boy and still has things to learn. When he falls and fails, that adolescent theme returns. It keeps him angry, frustrated, sad and dark. That’s where he was at this time. By his own admission, he was in a very dark space and went through some dark years, and I didn’t want to shy away from that.
No matter how fun and bombastic this crazy summer gets, or how funny the movie is, there’s something inside him keeping him frustrated, angry and sad. The score needed to be a window into that truth in his head.
Anthony Bourdain became someone whose voice was so recognisable – the cadence, the wit, the curiosity – but this film catches him before he’s really found that voice. Did you think about the score as the sound of somebody searching for their own frequency?
Searching generally, absolutely. That’s a great read of it. I wasn’t trying to be quite that specific, but as a longtime fan of Bourdain, I had standards for myself. If somebody else had been tasked with scoring his theme, I would have respected that challenge and had expectations about how they approached it.
I was somewhat protected because, like the movie, we weren’t trying to recreate the man we already know. I kept it on a simple emotional level. I thought about what he might have been like as an angry 19-year-old and worked through trial and error on the piano until I found a feeling that rhymed.
Once I found it, everything suddenly felt true. It became the code I needed to crack and the north star for the rest of the score.
The score also has to live alongside needle drops that already carry so much cultural memory. How do you find the space where your score can say something those songs can’t?
It was almost gifted to me because he was living through such an insane summer. Everything is loud, fun, dangerous and wild, so I loved that the score could juxtapose that with these windows into his darker inner dialogue. The more contrast, the better.
The exception is when he runs out onto the beach for the striper run with Chef and goes out on the boats. Suddenly his mind lights up. I took everything I’d been doing on the lower part of the piano, brought it to the top and layered around 20 different pianos dancing around each other, as if his synapses were firing and he was experiencing a new optimism he’d never felt before.
A lot of people comment on that track because it stands out. Until then, you’re down there with him. The camera is close, and Dominic Sessa plays that brooding quality beautifully. Then he runs onto that beach and suddenly there’s this ocean of opportunity in front of him.
You’ve built such a particular creative language with Matt (Johnson) over the years, but Tony feels emotionally different from your previous collaborations. At this point, does Matt still need to explain what he wants, or can he describe a feeling or an image and you already know where he’s pointing?
I’m fortunate that Matt has always trusted and leaned on my opinion early in the process. We’re old friends, so I’ve always been a backboard for his ideas. He’ll share filmmaking ideas with me and I can react very openly – whether that’s, “That’s amazing,” or questioning why he might approach something a certain way.
I’ll read the first drafts of the script and we’ll have meetings about them, so I’m brought into the process very early. By the time he goes into production and we reach the scoring stage, we’re already in lockstep about where it should be.
We’re lucky that our tastes are so similar. When he tells me an idea, I generally understand how he wants to execute it. We can suggest little tweaks to each other, but we’re usually looking in the same direction. That comes from being old friends.
Finally, when you were finding the film’s musical language, what came first: Provincetown, 1975 or Tony himself? Was there a sound or instrument where you suddenly thought, “This is the movie”?
Being set in a seafood restaurant right on the water in Provincetown, with such a nautical element to the story, immediately gave me something. I knew I wanted Tony’s theme on the lower piano, sitting on a bed of accordion and harmonium that evoked the sea.
I didn’t want to use accordion as a lead instrument in a stereotypically fisherman-like way. It was more of a pad underneath everything, and suddenly it felt organic, flawed, dusty and distinguished. Even at 19, I imagine Anthony Bourdain having that distinguished quality, and Dominic Sessa captures it beautifully.
The music needed some rust and worn wood in it. There were certain adjectives, feelings and instruments that rhymed with what we were doing: low upright piano, creaking wood, accordions and harmoniums. It became this maritime dirge.
I loved that it wasn’t the biopic we might expect. It’s this slice of life about the period when he was becoming Anthony Bourdain. I remember walking out thinking how good the soundtrack was. Congratulations again.
Thank you. You must mean the needle drops too, right? There’s such great music.
Tony is now screening in Australian theatres.
