Similar article from CBC Music
In the meantime, the pair are dealing with an unexpected consequence of their “Nirvanna” success: becoming internet heartthrobs.
“Matt and I have, in some corners of the internet, just been turned into sex dolls. Hey, look, we deserve every bit of it — it’s all on screen,” McCarrol quips.
He says the online fandom runs “the spectrum from fun and cute to downright freaky,” and includes a fair share of Nirvanna the Band fan fiction.
“I’ve been given a few artists’ renditions of Matt and I with our arms around each other, kissing,” he says.
“We like it.”
“My feeling is that when he’s in his 40s, he is trying to portray himself, I won’t say in the best possible light, but as the character that he thinks that either people want to see or that he’s creating. … And then I think as he gets older, he’s given another opportunity to look at the same period, but now through the eyes of somebody who’s a success. And it’s very different when you are self-mythologizing as a 39, 40-year-old man who hasn’t made it, who’s basically a nobody, versus when, … basically, there’s nobody more famous in the world of chef, author, world traveller,” Johnson told Yahoo Canada.
“Australia?” he says, visibly stoked. “I’m a huge Aussiephile. Australia means a lot to me because I’m Canadian and I grew up skiing and snowboarding, which means I grew up skiing and snowboarding with Australians. I love …” – he draws a name out of his memory – “… Civic Video. I love Chris Lilley. He’s a major influence on me, major, major. Peter Weir, I probably love him too much.”
We asked McCarrol to share his favourite film scores — here’s what he said:
“Within 30 minutes, I was like, ‘Dom, we’re going to make this movie about Anthony Bourdain.’ It was us getting excited about exactly the things you see in the movie,” Johnson recalls. “A young man lying to create status. What’s it like to have all your self-worth tied up in how women see you. The power of homosocial relationships as a developmental tool. And then my job was to bring Bourdain into this conspiracy and read everything that he’d written and go, ‘Okay, let’s see where you agree with us.’”
“Don’t write where we’re eating,” Matt Johnson told me recently over a very tasty plate of chicken and naan.
In the wake of his two buzzy 2026 movies, Johnson is staying busy. He directed comedian and Tony actor Stavros Halkias’s upcoming Netflix special Uncle Stav. He’s developing a Toronto crime movie starring Finn Wolfhard for Neon, as well as a TSA comedy with Josh Safdie for A24. And he’s currently hard at work on a live-action Magic: The Gathering feature, while also chasing down a green light for the long-awaited third season of Nirvanna the Band the Show.
In recent years, Canadian director Matt Johnson has served up two unexpected exceptions to the biopic trap. His 2023 “BlackBerry,” about the rapid rise and fall of the breakthrough smartphone, is a workplace comedy turned late capitalist tragedy with a “Succession”-like lack of reverence for its subjects. And his new film “Tony,” about the summer a young Anthony Bourdain spent working in a Provincetown kitchen, works as a coming-of-age film, regardless if you know its miserable 20-year old protagonist, played by Dominic Sessa, will become the beloved writer, chef, and “Parts Unknown” host.
Over lunch, Johnson and Sessa talk about depicting a globally admired figure on screen, what his story can teach us about both mentorship and self-discovery, and how it inspired their own close-knit friendship.