While Anthony Bourdain wrote about his time in Provincetown in the 1970s, depicted in Tony , in early chapters of Kitchen Confidential , his memoir wasn't what cracked this story open for director Matt Johnson; it was a passage Bourdain wrote as an introduction to Howard Mitcham's Provincetown Seafood Cookbook . While that may seem odd or unconventional, it's an incredibly wise decision on Johnson's part to inform a biopic that feels as intimate and honest as possible for someone who, particularly at the time of the film, was presenting as the person he wanted to be, rather than the person he was. In that passage, Bourdain wrote about receiving the cookbook on the first day of his first job as a cook at The Flagship in Provincetown. He also highlighted that Mitcham was not a snob, "at a time when most cookbooks sounded as if they'd been written by someone in a smoking jacket." "Mitcham understood there is no difference between the joys of a great meal at a three-star Michelin and at a humble fisherman's bar — as long as it's made with love and with pride," Bourdain's introduction reads. When Bourdain wrote Kitchen Confidential, he was in his early 40s, and it was after the book's publication that he saw his greatest success, even outside culinary circles. While Kitchen Confidential was written by someone who still had much to achieve, the intro he wrote for the cookbook, published in 2018, was Bourdain reflecting on his life from a different perspective. "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 . "And then he gets to look at his life through, I would say, a slightly more humble lens. And so that passage was hugely influential to me because I thought, oh, it told me at once that the Anthony Bourdain in this book, Kitchen Confidential, is a fiction in a way. And it also lets you know what he wanted to be seen as. And so, because he has an ideal in his head, it tells you, in some ways, what he was, and that's what the movie's trying to get at, is that you are also your own opposite, which is what [Dominic Sessa] is playing so beautifully." Dominic Sessa: 'Emilia is, to me, one of the most important characters in the film' But before we get to this passage, Johnson takes us inside the mind and circumstances of a 19-year-old Bourdain who tries to impress his crush, Nancy, at a bar, played by Emilia Jones, to no avail. Then sitting around the dinner table with his family, he tells them he got a writing fellowship from Vassar's English department to write a novel, only to receive the official call telling him it went to another student. But what's interesting about the family dinner moment is that while his dad is excited, his mother instantly confronts him, skeptical and wanting details. And then it's Nancy, who's the other woman in his life, who sees through his facade.

"I think Emilia is, to me, one of the most important characters in the film, just in terms of understanding the motivation behind what Tony's doing," Sessa said. "It's … falsely assuming that she's someone that I can manipulate and convince her of this idea of myself that I want to portray. And that's something that I think was consistent in Tony's life in the real world, was constantly being concerned with the way women in his life viewed him. And that was such a main source of motivation for the things he did and the choices he made." "It's hard to kind of admit that thing, but she, ultimately, … is the person that he marries in real life, and teaches him how to kind of … operate with integrity in his life." Tony: (L-R) Michael Jibrin, Stavros Halkias (Seacia Pavao) 'I was set up so perfectly in the movie' When Bourdain doesn't get the fellowship, he follows Nancy to Provincetown and is shocked to learn she has a boyfriend. But he stays, sleeping on a hammock outside the home of the head chef (Banderas) of a seafood restaurant, in exchange for working and cleaning dishes. The liveliest moments of the film are when Bourdain is in the kitchen with the rebellious and charismatic Sal (Leo Woodall), who works at the restaurant shucking oysters, also working alongside Stavros Halkias' character, who's loud and fun to watch, and doesn't hesitate to call Bourdain out when he messes up. "I was set up so perfectly in the movie where … Matt really let me improvise. … To be honest, I didn't look at the script after day one," Halkias said. "But it was very nurturing because, when somebody tells you improvise, you're going to do something great for two minutes, you're going to do something horrible for 15. … What was easy for me was Matt … was like, 'Do not worry, I will only use stuff that makes you look incredible.' And that just let me be very free." "And then portraying the guy was so easy. I mean, this is what my life looks like if stand-up doesn't go through. … My mom was a waitress in a Greek restaurant. I would have been working the calamari station if things didn't go well. So I was really just tapping into people I grew up around. My dad was a carpenter. All his friends were these kind of loudmouth scumbags. … This character is a different universe version of me, and creatively, I was just free to do what I could, and it was the best." With the foundation laid by Johnson's approach, it's the dynamics of the performances by Sessa, Jones, Banderas, Woodall, and Halkias that really elevate the film. Tony will be released in theatres in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver Aug. 14, and the rest of Canada on Aug. 21