Director Matt Johnson candidly detailed the immense creative struggles he experienced while directing Tony, an A24 biographical drama about a young Anthony Bourdain starring Dominic Sessa. Moving away from his signature improvised style left the indie filmmaker feeling deeply trapped and filled with unexpected dread throughout the production.

Stepping into conventional Hollywood filmmaking required sacrificing the spontaneous freedom that defined his celebrated early projects.

Director Matt Johnson has expressed feeling constrained while filming Tony due to its traditional production structure. Unlike his past projects like Nirvana: The Band the Show, where his team relied on guerrilla tactics and constant improvisation, this period film required strict adherence to written scripts. Having to follow rigid schedules left him with zero room to chase spontaneous ideas on set.

The filmmaker admitted in an interview of Indie Wire, that adjusting to fixed plans challenged his established creative process, making him feel trapped.

“It was a real shedding of what normally makes me comfortable… and the struggle was that for the first time I was really locked into what we had planned, and that makes me sound so amateur, rightfully," he noted. He added that trying to make small adjustments on a massive set felt nearly impossible.

Collaborating with cinematographer Michael Bauman helped him navigate the structured environment, as noted in Indie Wire’s interview. Together, they sought a visual style that mirrored Bourdain's writing, relying solely on traditional acting and deliberate storytelling. Despite expanding his technical skills, the director could not entirely overcome the sensation of being confined by rigid production machinery.

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His past filmography illustrates how his artistic identity usually relies heavily on chaotic, rebellious energy.

As noted in the same interview with Indie Wire, throughout his career, Matt Johnson centred his stories around ambitious young men attempting bold creative endeavours. Whether depicting engineers in BlackBerry or CIA crews in Operation Avalanche, his projects reflect the reckless spirit of film school experimentation.

His earlier works, including Nirvana: The Band the Show, utilized run-and-gun tactics to capture genuine moments of unscripted madness. The director believes scripts should serve merely as springboards for discovering raw, uncontrolled energy on set. To him, executing a scene exactly as planned deprives the final project of authentic artistic magic.

“My feeling is that the script and the plan is just your springboard for you to then discover something alive and out of control on the day. And every single movie I’ve ever made, the things that work in the film are the things that were mistakes, accidents that happened in a way that I can’t control,” he said during the interview with Indie Wire. Matt Johnson's experience on Tony proves that true directorial growth often requires confronting the discomfort of rigid creative boundaries.

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What do you think about Matt Johnson's experience on directing Tony? Let us know in the comments.