Charlie Pontus is an out-of-work screenwriter (is there any other kind?). Evicted from his hotel room, penniless Pontus wanders the streets of LA, alternately exhorting and condemning God and Man, while scribbling screen treatments on yellow legal pads and trying to sell his few tattered possessions for food money. Poor Pontus, though, is cursed with an almost saint-like selflessness which compels him to put his fellow homeless travellers before himself, further dooming him to starvation and the twisted clarity hunger brings. Pontus' newest treatment catches the eye of a studio chief and he struggles to crank out the script while battered by celestial visions and his longing for a beautiful streetwalker.