“Essentially, I treated the world as my ashtray,” Anthony Bourdain wrote in his bestselling 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential, the book that would eventually spur his television career. In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain describes his college-age self as “spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, and thoughtless.” In real life, a young Bourdain found much more than romance in Ptown. Director Matt Johnson and co-screenwriters Todd Bartels and Lou Howe cared most about getting the “vibe” of a young Bourdain right; the rest was up for creative license. So they settled on making a film focused on one meaningful slice of Bourdain’s life.