I walked into Consolidated Theatres last Sunday harboring unprocessed grief and still a tinge high on magic mushrooms.
I had not been to a movie theatre in over a decade. I felt like a kid discovering a McDonald's playland for the first time. You can order beer now! And the seats recline! And there are T.V. trays to put your food and drinks on! I snuggled in, excited, feeling more comfortable than I do in my own living room at home. But the joy of watching an exuberant biopic filled with funny stories and television highlights wore off about 1 hour and 45 minutes in when the tide turned and interviewees started dropping bombs such as Tony’s girlfriend being in the tabloids with another man the weekend Tony offed himself.
“A little discretion would be nice,” Tony said.
Tears streamed down David Chang and David Choe’s faces and I lost it.
Tony was my father, my ex-husband, my imaginary mentor, my idol. Iʻve wanted to be him since I was 19-years-old. A cook, a chef, a writer, a traveler, a person who gave a real shit about the underdogs. This was him and this is me. Kitchen Confidential was published the year I started culinary school. It was my launchpad. It reassured me that I was on the right path. It felt like my safety net, my paperback woobie. It held the answers I could not yet explain to myself, or my mother for that matter, for why I wanted to pursue a career in cooking.
Shortly after my father died I left the restaurant business and started to pursue writing [along with other things]. My life has been anything but a straight line ever since. Less than a year after I moved to Hawai’i, finally feeling like I was on the right path, I hopped online one morning to find the news. Tony was gone. In an instant, I felt myself spiraling back down that familiar hole.
How is it that someone I only know from TV and literature can affect me so much to the point I am grieving his death as if he were my best friend? Maybe his death reminds me that I am still grieving the deaths of my dad – a New Yorker that had the heart and soul of Tony and also died too young – and my 15-year relationship with a chef who was nearly a spitting image of Tony (minus the writing), especially in the kitchen.
Choe closes out the movie by defacing a mural of Tony, admitting that Tony would hate it if we idolized him by doing things like painting his face on the side of buildings. Although I love the punk rock sentiment, the scene didn’t make me feel better. I felt worse. And have continued to feel worse every day since I saw the film.
I miss you Tony. Your void just cannot be filled.