Pianist Jason Moran offers an innovative take on Duke Ellington

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Monty Roberts, the internationally acclaimed horseman who used trust instead of intimidation to train horses died last week. He was 91. He defied the conventional method of breaking horses, something he watched his father do, and created his own gentler approach, known as join up. He based it on the nonverbal language horses used to communicate with each other. It was a language he observed as a teenager, watching wild mustangs in the Sierra Nevada.

Roberts was born in Salinas, California, in 1935. He grew up around horses, could ride confidently at 3, and by the time he was 8, said he spent 10-hour days working with horses, competing on weekends. He became a champion rider and was a stunt rider in about a hundred movies, including as a young boy, the Elizabeth Taylor film "National Velvet." He's trained thousands of horses, including wild horses, racehorses and problem horses.

Roberts became internationally known after Queen Elizabeth II brought him to work with her horses in 1989. She supported his controversial gentle approach to horse training and urged him to write his memoir, "The Man Who Listens To Horses," which became a best seller in 1996. Their 30 year friendship was the subject of the 2023 Andrea Nevins documentary "The Cowboy And The Queen." From his California ranch, Monty Roberts introduced his techniques to horse owners, trainers and students from around the world. He also traveled widely giving demonstrations.

Terry Gross spoke to Monty Roberts in 1997, shortly after his memoir was published. Roberts first learned about horses from his father who ran a riding school at the massive Salinas Rodeo, but Roberts' father used pain and punishment to break horses.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

MONTY ROBERTS: Well, I suppose you'd say my father was a very traditional horse trainer, working in the conventional manner. And, the main concept is, you do what I tell you to, or I'll hurt you. What it is is that, whether I hurt you a lot or a little, it's dealing with negative reinforcement. The use of pain or corporal punishment or acting out, in violence to train the animal not to do that thing that you're, um, you're against or you're working to avoid.

TERRY GROSS: So what approach to discipline and negative reinforcement did your father use?

ROBERTS: Well, he would tie legs up on horses and tie them down on the ground. He would tie them to posts and work in such a way so as to frighten them and cause them to test those tethers to the maximum degree, which would bash them very violently. Oftentimes, they were on the ground, oftentimes there was blood, and there was injury. It was all done in the vein that that's necessary to do to break this horse. And break is a very good word. It's been used for about 6,000 years now to describe the procedures used to cause a horse to accept saddle, bridle and rider and training, if you will.

GROSS: What do you call your approach?

ROBERTS: Starting. The approach itself is titled join up. But the procedure, I say, starting the horse rather than breaking the horse. Because I don't use any pain or restraint, and I request that the horse do the things I want. I don't demand it. I ask the horse to do them so as to cause a state of mind whereby he wants to do them, not because he's forced to do them.

GROSS: Your basic principle in training horses is to try to use horse language to communicate with the horses, to use horse behavior and horse language, which you learned from being with horses in the wild, which we'll get to in a few minutes. Describe your join up method of asking, basically - asking the horse first to go away and to then join up with you.

ROBERTS: Yeah. Well, it's their language and they use this business of sending the animal away. That is, they use it inter-specie as well as intra-specie. So they use this business of sending the animal away - isolation, rejection - as a discipline, and when that animal is out there isolated, the flight animal - the animal who provides meat for the predator - is very concerned about that, and they want to come back in the worst possible way. So that's the most severe punishment that you can deal a flight animal.

GROSS: A wild horse is more vulnerable to being preyed on when it's on its own than when it's with other horses.

ROBERTS: Exactly. The isolated grazer or flight animal is smorgasbord for the lion or the tiger or the grizzly bear and that sort of thing, even coyotes, but wolves, certainly. And so, they're very upset with that, and I discovered this language going on in the wild, watched how they communicated with one another and then utilized those responses in order to request their compliance or their cooperation.

GROSS: So how do you first send the horse away, which the horse doesn't like?

ROBERTS: Well, that's easy because they're a flight animal, and if you're dealing with untrained animals, all you have to do is use the aggressive phrases in their own language, and the animal goes away. That's the easy part.

GROSS: What aggressive phrases in horse language do you use?

ROBERTS: Well, first of all it would be eyes on eyes - piercing the eyes. That does not draw the animal in as it would the grizzly or the great white, but it drives the horse away. Then shoulders square, all movement square - fingers open and extended drives the horses away. There's lots of motions and positions of the body which mean go away.

GROSS: And how do you get the horse, then, to come back?

ROBERTS: Well, once the horse has gone its flight distance, then they begin to communicate that they would like to come back. And they do that with basically four statements. One is with the ear to say, I respect you. I don't know what this is all about, but I'll give you my respect. And then, two, that they'll try to come closer to you, just physically bending and trying to come closer to you. Three, that they lick and chew. They stick their tongue right out and then chew, and it's my opinion that they're saying, I'm a grazer. I'm a herbivore. I'm eating over here, and if I'm eating, I can't fear you because if we had any adrenalin or fear in us, we would have to stop eating. And then four, the dropping of the head down and bouncing the nose right along the ground, which means, if we could have this meeting to renegotiate the deal, I would let you be the chairman of the meeting.

GROSS: So when the horse does all these things that you just mentioned, what signals are you giving, like, come back - let's get together now?

ROBERTS: Well, after those four, then I go passive from aggressive, those earlier ones that I mentioned, and passive means to take the eyes off the eyes, to lower your gaze, to put your shoulders on a 45-degree angle to the horse's body axis, to face slightly away, and to round all your movements, inviting the horse to come in. There's dozens of movements, but those are the basic ones.

GROSS: You grew up on the grounds of a rodeo. Your parents ran a riding school, and you basically grew up in the rodeo. You won the national intercollegiate rodeo bulldogging championship. You won all kinds of, like, horse medals over the years. You started learning about horse language through observing wild mustangs in Sierra Nevada. And this relates to a wild horse race that used to be part of the rodeo.

And when the wild horses were done with this race, the horses, at the time you were young, were taken to the slaughterhouse to be made into dog food - something that you found very upsetting. So I want you to tell the story of how this wild horse race, in which the horses would later be taken out and slaughtered, how that relates to your observing of wild horses.

ROBERTS: Well, yeah, OK. The opportunity came up for me to go to Nevada and capture and bring these wild horses back to Salinas. My idea was that after the horse race was over, if I could put these horses through a program to cause them to accept saddle, bridle and rider, that they could go through a sale and be usable by people and, therefore, save their lives. And not only that, but that they would pay more for them than the people at the slaughterhouse. And I convinced the president of the association that this might be true. And he let me go and do this as an experiment one year. And, in fact, it worked out well. I did that several years, and you know, it became the normal thing. Now, that's all ancillary to what was really important in all of this, as we look back on it, because what actually happened that was of much more importance to me was that it was a university. They were my teachers.

GROSS: The wild horses.

ROBERTS: It was - yeah, it was just an incredible adventure in learning, where I learned their language - spoken in the raw, spoken in the rarest form of freedom and completely without human intervention.

GROSS: What were the first signs you picked up on, that made you realize there was a horse language that you could understand?

ROBERTS: First sign I picked up on was how the dominant female was running the family group. She was the controller of the sociological aspects of the family group. And as a very young child, I'd seen the movies - I thought the black stallion was the one that ran all the show, you know. Well, the black stallion doesn't have any decisions to make at all except how to get the mares pregnant and how to keep some other black stallion from taking them away. And once you end with those two obligations, you've done the stallion in. It's the mare who educates the young and who communicates - who decides where we'll eat and which direction we'll travel. And that's the first thing I noticed, was that the matriarch was the decision-maker of the sociological group.

GROSS: And then what did you notice about communication? How horses use the language with each other?

ROBERTS: The first thing I noticed in the forms or expressions of communication was the mare squaring up and isolating the obstreperous teenager, adolescent.

GROSS: And then - and forcing them out of the group for a while as punishment?

ROBERTS: Forcing them out of the group and holding them out of the group until they'd paid a price for their deed, whatever it was. And then how they allowed them back in and so forth and so on as you go through all of the expressions of their language.

GROSS: You also studied horses ears and what they communicate.

ROBERTS: Oh, indeed. The ears are very expressive, and you can read pretty much the intentions and the concerns of a horse by his ears.

GROSS: And what do the ears tell you?

ROBERTS: Well, they tell you everything. I mean, they tell you whether they're angry, whether they're happy. They tell you whether they're tired or fresh.

GROSS: Depending on whether the ears are back or forward or...

ROBERTS: Yeah, depending on their positions. And their movement - and the speed of their movement will tell you a lot of things about their concerns and their adrenalin levels and all of those things.

BIANCULLI: Monty Roberts speaking to Terry Gross in 1997. More after a break, this is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1997 interview with horse trainer and author Monty Roberts. The man who espoused a more humane method of training horses died last week at age 91.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Over the years, a lot of people have brought problem horses to you - horses with serious behavior problems, horses who can't seem to be trained or who actually attack people. How do you adapt your technique to work with horses who have behavior problems?

ROBERTS: Well first of all, Terry, there's no such thing as a problem horse on the face of the earth. There are horses who have problems with people. But yes, you're right - there are a lot of horses that people term problem horses. And yes, you're right, they do bring them to me, and generally after they've run the gamut to its maximum and the horse is absolutely, you know, given up on by everybody else, and they call me in.

An example of that certainly is Lomitas (ph) in Germany and more recently here in the United States, a filly called Song of Africa, who started her career in Ireland - thoroughbred for racing. And in her first race, she had a very serious time of it at the starting stalls or the starting gate just prior to the race. And she wound up being injured and crushing the gates all apart and being disqualified from the race, and it was a mess. And then she was put into some very harsh training to fix her, you know?

And then the next thing you know, she was fighting people and she had scars all over her and was in desperate shape. And the trainer in Ireland suggested that she be taken to the United States, where they claim they have greater expertise in this kind of thing, and she landed on the East Coast of the United States to be trained for another year, or approximately that, before the trainer said, you know, take her home and shoot her. She's just hopeless. And then I got the call, and at that moment in time, she was in a little place called Payson Park in Florida.

And I went there from California to meet the most incredibly beautiful but confused young female that you could ever imagine. And I worked with her for four days. Mind you, it had been two and a half years that they had gone the other way, and in four days, she simply said, this will be fine. I will do this. And she's racing and winning. She's one of the best fillies in the United States today.

GROSS: What do you think it is that you were able to do that turned her attitude around?

ROBERTS: To give her trust in the human being. She never had trust before because she'd been beaten up. She'd been caused pain by human beings, to say you must do this or I'll hurt you.

GROSS: So when you handed her back to her owner, did you have to convince her owner to never use punishment on the horse again?

ROBERTS: I never would have left California if I hadn't had an agreement to give me a young person from their organization who would learn all of the techniques that I used with this particular filly. Now, I can't teach that person all that I know in four days, but I can specifically deal with the problems of this filly and teach them enough to handle the problems of this one individual horse. And they handed me a young man, oddly enough, coincidentally, from Ireland, by the name of David Duggin (ph). And he has continued to do my work, to extend my communication with this filly, so that successfully she's been able to go on and do her racing.

GROSS: As a child, you were a stunt rider, and you, I think, doubled for Elizabeth Taylor in "National Velvet." You did some work in "My Friend Flicka." You doubled for Roddy McDowell, Mickey Rooney, Charlton Heston, Tab Hunter to name a few. Do you have a favorite stunt that you had to do in the films?

ROBERTS: I suppose they - the movies-makers tend to categorize you, and they say oh, we're going to to this. That guy Roberts he does that about as - about the best of anybody. It seems to me that my spot became most famous in the riding of horses down very steep hills - rocky, sandy hills where you blast straight down into the river and stuff like that.

GROSS: I've seen that in a thousand westerns (laughter).

ROBERTS: Yeah. Well that was me. That is to say, if you saw one made in the '40s or '50s, I was probably involved if there were rocks and sand flying, and you went into the trees or into the river, that was probably me.

GROSS: So what were some of the things you have to do to stay on the horse and make that work?

ROBERTS: I always said you get high, that is to say, you get light on the horse, you get high above him. And you try not to interfere with his own movements, so that he has the best chance of keeping his feet. And then as you approach, let's say, the river, that you separate from him and get distance enough so that he can't hurt you when you go into the water. And you basically leave him alone as much as possible.

GROSS: Did you do any of that fancy showy stuff like side-saddle riding? And when you're holding on to the saddle and your body is suspended on the side of the horse while you're dodging bullets from the bad guy who's shooting from behind a rock.

ROBERTS: Oh, that was - that was one of the first stunts they asked me to do. They said, can you gallop left to right and make yourself invisible by hanging off...

GROSS: That's it.

ROBERTS: ...The far side.

GROSS: Yeah. That's it.

ROBERTS: Yeah, I did a lot of that, and jumping on from behind, yes. And I used the mini-trampoline a lot, so...

GROSS: Oh, wait, wait - what did you use that for?

ROBERTS: Well, so that you thought I could jump eight feet high when I got on...

GROSS: Oh, so that's how it's done.

ROBERTS: Yeah.

GROSS: I didn't realize that.

ROBERTS: Little trampolines are very handy for that kind of thing. And, yeah, I had to do all that - the vaulting. You come out of the bar and grab the saddle horn and the horse runs down the street, and you hang on his side, and then vault into the saddle so that you can catch up to the bank robbers or whatever. Yep, I did all those kind of things - jumped the horse through the bar room window and up the stairs and into the saloon or whatever.

BIANCULLI: Monty Roberts speaking with Terry Gross in 1997. After a break, we'll continue their conversation. Also, Martin Johnson reviews "Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington," and Justin Chang reviews the new film biography of Anthony Bourdain. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHO WHO WHO AM I TO YOU")

NICOLETTE BIRNIE: (Singing) Who, who, who am I to you? Am I just some four-legged fool? Will you make me happy, or should I run to pastures new? Tell me, who, who, who am I to you? Am I the dirt bike that you jam on, or am I your partner on this ride? Will you treat me kind, or will you blow my mind? Tell me, who, who, who am I to you? Who, who, who am I to you? Am I just some four-legged fool? Will you make me happy, or should I run to pastures new? Tell me, who, who, who am I to you?

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. We're remembering Monty Roberts, the horse trainer who pioneered and advocated a more gentle approach to training horses. His philosophy was embraced and supported by Queen Elizabeth II, beginning a friendship that lasted 30 years. When she died in 2022, at age 96, he was one of the invited guests at her royal funeral. Monty Roberts died last week at age 91. Terry Gross spoke to him in 1997.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: When you were a young man, you worked in rodeos, and one of the things you did was the bull riding events. You won a championship in that area. You described that as the most dangerous event in the rodeo. Why?

ROBERTS: Yeah. I won a couple of small championships in bull riding. I won my major championship in bulldogging. But bull riding is a very dangerous event, and it's dangerous because the bull generally weighs between 1,400 and 2,000 pounds. And they move with unbelievable agility, and they don't want you on their back. And they can be very dangerous. And what they do to you oftentimes flings you through the air for 30 or 40 feet and bashes you up against some wall or fence or throw you down and jump on top of you kind of thing. It's just really dangerous. And virtually everybody that goes into it suffers significant injuries at one point or another.

GROSS: Well, here's what I want to know. You're somebody who has such a strong kinship with horses, tries to communicate with them in their own language. Do you feel any empathy with the bulls?

ROBERTS: Yeah. I love bulls.

GROSS: You do?

ROBERTS: I love them to death. And my son became a very good bull rider later, and he was absolutely in love with bulls. I mean, we had bulls in training programs to teach them to buck, and I have great empathy for the bulls and don't ever feel that those bulls are being mistreated. They get the best treatment you could ever imagine. They get the best of feed and care, and they're protected by their owners to the maximum degree. And they have great fun in what they do. They have the upper hand every single day.

GROSS: What does it feel like to be thrown by a bull?

ROBERTS: It hurts a lot, and it's loud noises when your head hits the ground and stuff. It's stupid. It's really stupid for anybody to go into that.

GROSS: What I was going to ask you - what is the point of this event (laughter)?

ROBERTS: It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. But when you're raised around it and you watch your peers accomplishing something so incredibly overwhelming by riding this particular bull, there's some kind of urge within us, crazy human beings, to try to do that, too. And I really didn't like my son going into it. He's a practicing lawyer. He's a 3.7 graduate from Stanford in econ. Why would you put that brain in such great jeopardy, you know? But it ran its course and he got out of it without serious injury, and I'm very pleased for that.

GROSS: As we discussed earlier, your father was a horse trainer, and he tried to whip horses into submission, to kind of beat them into submission. And I guess he used brutality on you, too, to try to keep you in line. And I'm wondering if that's related to the fact that you have adopted, I think, about 47 foster kids over the years...

ROBERTS: Sure.

GROSS: ...For different intervals of time, kids who had been abused or who had run into problems with the law. Do those two things relate?

ROBERTS: Oh, sure they do. I didn't know they did when I began to do it. You see, I went through university in psychology, and I volunteered for every family psychology experiment or lab project that they had. And I really found myself enjoying this parent-and-children relationship and the psychology of children. So after I left university, people in the county, in the state agencies, saw great value in what I was doing, and they began to give me calls and recommend that there was a child locked up in Paso Robles, California, that they felt had great potential if just given a chance. Why don't you go meet them, you know? And they knew I was a sucker. And I'd go meet these kids and bring them home. And what can you do, man? I had to try to help.

And my life was going pretty well. My horses were making me a little money, and I never asked for any money for these foster children to stay with me. And it just began an odyssey that went on for about 35 years. And those 47 foster children span about 35 years. So, you know, it wasn't like we had so many at one time, but it was a very gratifying thing to do. And there's about 40 very positive stories to tell in all of this and seven very negative stories to tell with no gray areas. And that's just the way it is. They - it either took or it didn't. But those odds are incredibly good when you consider kids between 11 and 13 coming to me, already incarcerated in wards of the county, wards of the state type thing.

GROSS: Did you use any of the principles that you had learned working with horses when you were working with your children?

ROBERTS: I used all the principles, the same principles. It's the same psychology. Give them a chance to fail, so they can have that chance to succeed. When they fail, they're responsible for their own actions. But when they succeed, they're also responsible for their own actions, and they must get the most positive rewards that you can possibly think of to give them. Generally love, generally exaltation, moving upward, giving them advancements, giving them a chance to learn something new when they achieve something.

GROSS: Not too many years ago - well, maybe you could tell me the year 'cause I don't really remember. You had major back surgery. I mean, your back had basically given out because of all of the falls you've taken over the years, the impact of all the riding on horses and bulls (laughter). And the doctor told you you'd never ride again. I think they would have been happier if you walked, but you ended up being able to walk and ride. However, I'm sure you're much more fragile than you were before your back problems. When you're working with a horse now, are you just a little more self-protective of your own body than you were before, and is that affecting your technique with horses?

ROBERTS: Yes, I am more protective now, more careful than I was when I was young. I think that's kind of a natural evolution for most people. But for me, it's a good deal more serious because I was in a wheelchair for a while, and they didn't know whether I'd get out of that. And then I was on crutches for about a year, and they didn't know whether I'd ever get off of some support system. And I'm just one accident away from the wheelchair, if you will. So I'm much more protective now, and it does affect my work with horses, not all that negatively, because sometimes I just go that bit slower and maybe it's even more effective.

And I'm teaching my young people now to go that bit slower and to give the horse a little more opportunity to get ready for things and to slowly come into things. I often say to my students, if you go at something with a horse as though you have all day to do it, it might take you about 15 minutes. But if you go at it like you have 15 minutes, it might take you all day, and it's truly a tortoise and hare situation in the real. I mean, that story of the tortoise and hare isn't very plausible, but this is a plausible story with the same techniques.

GROSS: Tell me about your favorite horse.

ROBERTS: My favorite horse, Johnny Tivio, a horse that I won four world championships with, a horse that was abused as a young horse. I got him in a very sad state, but I knew his talents. I had seen him with an abusive trainer as a very young animal. And I was able to get him at five years of age, not all that old, you know? And he - when he got trusting the human being, he turned his life around and became so productive, it was unreal. And you just had to get out of his way to allow him to win championships. He was a cutting horse and reined cow horse. He was an extension of me. He was like a brother, like a very close brother would be. But I have a lot of favorites, and Song of Africa is rising quickly on the list.

BIANCULLI: Monty Roberts, speaking to Terry Gross in 1997. He died last week at age 91. His memoir is called "The Man Who Listens To Horses," and the recent documentary about him is called "The Cowboy And The Queen." Coming up, Martin Johnson reviews "Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington." This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The music of the great Duke Ellington has been a staple of jazz repertoire for decades. There even are big band competitions built around his formidable songbook. But lately, as much as Ellington is rightly revered, there are recordings coming out where artists both build on Duke's extraordinary music and find midway points between the legend and themselves. One of the best examples of this is from pianist Jason Moran, who does a solo rendition of mostly Ellington compositions on the Bandcamp-only release "Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington." Jazz critic Martin Johnson says the commonalities are as striking as the innovations.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "I'VE GOT IT BAD AND THAT AIN'T GOOD")

MARTIN JOHNSON, BYLINE: The music of Duke Ellington is a cornerstone in jazz, but lately, musicians are building unique structures with it. That's the Ellingtonian classic "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good" from Jason Moran's solo presentation of Duke's music. And the difference is immediately apparent to jazz fans. It's denser, more rhythmically insistent. Essentially, it's as much Moran as it is Duke, which is Jason's style. In the past 20 years, he's produced tributes to the music of Thelonious Monk, Fats Waller and James Reese Europe, not by presenting faithful renditions of their songs, but by showing the common ground he shares with these greats and by making the music a little more current.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "BLACK AND TAN FANTASY")

JOHNSON: Ellington's music is often known for its regal elegance, but Moran values its grit. And he demonstrates this on "Black And Tan Fantasy." Also, Ellington typically worked with an orchestra. And Moran seeks to communicate the depth and force that comes from having more than a dozen musicians on the bandstand. Moran thinks of the dream state of the "Black And Tan Fantasy" and dives deep into the lower register of the piano to communicate it with a rumble.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "BLACK AND TAN FANTASY")

JOHNSON: Moran doesn't completely reject the elegance of Ellington's music. On "Fleurette Africaine," he lightens his typically heavy touch. And he allows the music to breathe more with an austere rendition.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "FLEURETTE AFRICAINE")

JOHNSON: No survey of Ellington's work is complete without touching on Duke's frequent collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. Moran includes Strayhorn's "Lotus Blossom," and he uses the lighter approach. But he also references the way Ellington presented it on the album "...And His Mother Called Him Bill," Duke's renowned tribute to his sidekick.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "LOTUS BLOSSOM")

JOHNSON: There's a stately grandeur to Ellington's music that was especially well captured by his orchestra. But Moran nails it on the piano on "Jeep's Blues" while retaining his trademark rhythmic insistence.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "JEEP'S BLUES")

JOHNSON: The piece features a remarkable solo by Ellington's legendary alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, and Moran seems to nod to it here.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "JEEP'S BLUES")

JOHNSON: These days, musical tributes often feature originals that reflect on the meaning of the subject. Tyshawn Sorey's tribute to Max Roach, Steve Lehman's ode to Anthony Braxton and Dave Douglas' "Gifts" ensemble, an Ellington tribute, are examples of this trend. Moran includes his original tune, "Means," which demonstrates the influence and fascination that Ellington has had on his own music.

(SOUNDBITE OF JASON MORAN'S "MEANS")

BIANCULLI: Jazz critic Martin Johnson writes for The Wall Street Journal and DownBeat. He reviewed "Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington." Coming up, Justin Chang reviews "Tony," the new film bio of Anthony Bourdain. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Anthony Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018, was an internationally known chef, writer and television star. The new movie "Tony," starring Dominic Sessa, Leo Woodall and Antonio Banderas, follows the young Bourdain's discovery of the culinary world that would make him famous. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says that this fast, funny, touching film is none of the things you fear it could be.

JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: A couple of decades ago, I lived for a year in Singapore. The question I was asked most often was, do you know Anthony Bourdain? He was an idol there, but not only there. Because his TV shows aired in almost every country, people everywhere knew him and saw him as an embodiment of what they liked about America. Bourdain was indisputably cool, with an aura of disreputable fun, but also generous and open to different cultures. Genuinely worldly, he didn't treat other societies' food as weird but as delicious and rooted in things that matter. We see the blossoming of that openness in "Tony," an amusing new movie based on a few pages from his breakthrough book "Kitchen Confidential."

Taking a splinter of Bourdain's life, the mid-1970s summer when he was 19, director Matt Johnson sidesteps the touch all the bases sludge of the biopic. Instead, "Tony" captures a few telling moments in the life of a wine-dark soul who was, as Homer said of Odysseus, the man of twists and turns. When we first meet Bourdain, played by lanky Dominic Sessa, he's an annoyingly brash, deeply insecure Vassar student. A would-be writer, he's trying to BS a literary fellowship committee and defending a novel that's a dialogue between Jack Kerouac and George Orwell. He calls the book a bildungsroman, the German term for the literary genre that tracks a person's moral and emotional growth. Naturally, it's Tony's own growth we'll be watching.

When the fellowship doesn't pan out, he heads off to a strangely un-gay Provincetown in hopes of romancing a fellow student, Nancy. That's Emilia Jones from "CODA." But he soon finds himself broke and alone. He's rescued by a man known simply as Chef, played by Antonio Banderas, whose sly, sneaky deep performance may well win him an Oscar. Chef lets him sleep on a hammock outside his house and, when Tony lies that he knows about kitchens, hires him to work in the back of his bare-bones seafood restaurant.

Away from work, Tony falls under the sway of his co-worker Sal, played with thuggish panache by rising star Leo Woodall, who's the movie's exemplar of the bad-boy chef. Sal steals, beats people up, collects notches from the door frames of women he sleeps with, and gives Tony cocaine in the kitchen. Tony's summer becomes a dialogue between the sociopathic Sal, who pulls him toward the self-destructive darkness that would eventually claim him, and the humane, almost saintly Chef, who helps him tap into the bigheartedness that would make him beloved.

Along the way, Tony finds a calling. He discovers his love of kitchen culture - with its culinary rituals, jocular camaraderie, amphetamine-rush need to get the dishes out and underlying sense that there's something hallowed in the communal act of eating.

Here, on his first day at the restaurant, Tony pretends he knows how to cook, and his co-workers let him have it.

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DOMINIC SESSA: (As Tony) You know, I can cook, too.

ANTONIO BANDERAS: (As Chef) Excuse me.

STAVROS HALKIAS: (As Stavros) He says he's a cook, Chef.

BANDERAS: (As Chef) Yeah, wonderful.

SESSA: (As Tony) I'm not a cook. I'm a writer. I said I could cook.

HALKIAS: (As Stavros) Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't understand that. Shut the [expletive] up (laughter).

SESSA: (As Tony) My dad's, like, one of the best chefs in New Jersey.

HALKIAS: (As Stavros) Aw, your dad. Why don't you say so (laughter)?

SESSA: (As Tony) Whatever.

POWERS: As an origin story, Tony is a tad too neat, yet vastly better than you get in comic book movies whose heroes are transformed by bites from radioactive spiders. From the start, we realize that Tony's surface bravado has no weight. Groping to find his identity, he has the uncoolness of a kid pretending to be cool. This is nicely pulled off by Sessa, a terrific young actor whom you may know as Paul Giamatti's student sidekick in "The Holdovers." It's a tricky role because Sessa must give us glimpses of the rock star Bourdain will become while also showing he's not yet there.

Johnson and his co-writers - Todd Bartels, Lou Howe and Matthew Miller - do a nifty job of giving Bourdain's transformation an arresting shape, pulling us into a propulsive rhythm of recurring scenes - Tony working in the kitchen, Chef waking Tony with water in his face, Sal acting psycho, Chef dragging the godless Tony to weekly mass.

Of course, real life lacks the clean arc of a story. Bourdain himself was known for embroidering his tales, and "Tony" takes similar liberties. In reality, he didn't go to Provincetown to win Nancy. He didn't go there alone. He didn't work at just one restaurant. He didn't have a boss as handsome as Antonio Banderas. There was no Sal. And the actual Tony Bourdain was not the innocent the film makes him seem.

No doubt the filmmakers would reply that while not literally true, Tony is emotionally true. Maybe so. In any case, the film is emotionally satisfying. Perhaps the highest praise I can offer is that it doesn't depend on Bourdain's fame to keep us interested. I would have enjoyed this movie even if its hero didn't have TV shows that play on every airline in the world.

BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed the new film "Tony." On Monday's show, journalist Gil Duran. He spent years following a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires and says they are at war with American democracy and winning. His new book is called "The Nerd Reich." Hope you can join us.

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FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

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