Joey (Crispin Glover) and his cohort Timmy (Steven Schub), wanting to be artists, manically run around New York and New Jersey struggling to survive while writing nothing and acting in nothing...They hound the wealthy literary agent Mathias (Rik Mayall) -- to whom they owe money -- and Stella (Tatum O'Neal) , a successful young playwright whom Joey is besotted with. Things start to go even further down for the two, including homelessness...Then Stella tells Joey she is leaving for England to do a play, causing his world to crash... Joey turns to literary theft...taking the work of a young, impoverished deaf poet who hangs out in a park, after the poet's protective brother Stu (John C. McGinley) is murdered in a drug deal...In doing so, Joey pays a high price -- for fame.