Director Matt Johnson on The Miles Davis Definition of Genius

Interviewing [Canadian!] filmmaker, Matt Johnson, about his new film Tony about Anthony Bourdain, The Big Picture’s Sean Fennessey asked an intriguing question, recognizing that Johnson making his first “big” Hollywood film, international stars and all (Dominic Sessa, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas), is crossing a “rubicon” that Bourdain himself crossed on publishing Kitchen Confidential. Fennessey suggested that perhaps for Johnson, gaining the fame and fulfilling his dreams that “Tony” once did might be more complicated or “Boudainish” as Fennessey puts it, than anticipated. So he wanted to know how the director was “handling it”. The answer was not obvious. Nor, do I believe, was it falsely modest [though I loved how Fennessey called Johnson out in case he was being just that]. Rather it was very inspiring.

Sean Fennessey: Is it everything you ever hoped and dreamed? Are you happy?

B/c sometimes the best available movie poster is the Italian movie poster

Matt Johnson: You know what, I think happiness is a bad metric. Because .. you know. I think happy means different things to different people. I’ll say I’ve never felt more proud that I can … I don’t want to say be a role model, but be an example of not how easy it is to be a filmmaker, but how you really don’t need to be some kind of genius to do it. Right? Like ..

SF: That’s not helpful. People don’t listen to you on this show and think, ‘This guy’s not really smart.’ They think the opposite of that.

MJ: Well you know what Miles Davis says about this is that a genius is a person who is most like themself. And that’s a path anyone can take.