Matt Johnson on Feeling 'Trapped' Making Tony
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- Matt Johnson directed 'Tony,' his first American film, starring Dominic Sessa as a 20-year-old Anthony Bourdain working a summer in a Cape Cod kitchen before his rise to fame.
- Johnson said he sometimes felt lost and 'trapped' shooting 'Tony,' where its script-bound structure was the opposite of his usual improvised, run-and-gun filmmaking with friends in Toronto.
- Johnson credits cinematographer Michael Bauman, a Paul Thomas Anderson alum he calls 'my best friend as we made this film,' with patiently guiding him through the more disciplined production.
- Josh Safdie is collaborating with Johnson on a comedy about the TSA, and Johnson called him 'the best young filmmaker in the world,' echoing Safdie's framing of directing as 'transferring enthusiasm from myself to the other people making this movie.'
- Johnson is developing 'Magic: The Gathering' as a potential studio trilogy and would inherit aspects of the 'Dune' production apparatus as Denis Villeneuve's trilogy concludes, per Vulture.
- A24 expands 'Tony' nationwide on Friday, August 21, after Johnson — who recently turned 40 — made two of the best-reviewed films of the year.
Why it matters: For indie directors eyeing studio work, Johnson's admission that a perfectly planned 'Tony' scene felt like 'a failure' illustrates the core tension between improvisational freedom and the discipline larger productions demand. His plan to inherit parts of Villeneuve's 'Dune' apparatus for 'Magic: The Gathering' puts his run-and-gun instincts to a direct test at studio scale.
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