Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.
A writer tries unsuccessfully to sell his screenplays and plays. He marries a television editor, but she only wants to fuck him and thinks nothing of his work. He then remembers his old Parisian lover Rita, calls himself Rita from then on and becomes her wife. When a French director stages a play of his, he meets Rita again in Paris and the two women become a happy couple.
The story of a Jewish novelist, Harry Lesser, struggling to complete his latest work, and his antagonistic relationship with a black writer who moves in down the hall.
In 1917 New Orleans, a 12-year-old girl is raised in a brothel by her prostitute mother.
Bo is a transexual prostitute in Brussels who left home after being abused by her father. She's infuatuated with a neighbor and suspected by the police in a series of transexual murders. In order to clear herself she must turn detective.
When a young man is arrested for trafficking drugs, his girlfriend tries to help him out by making some big money as a member of an exclusive group of high-end prostitutes.
Dispatched to a small Italian town to await further orders, assassin Jack embarks on a double life that may be more relaxing than is good for him.
The career of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is halted by a witch hunt in the late 1940s when he defies the anti-communist HUAC committee and is blacklisted.
After a shoot-out kills five FBI agents in Kansas City the Bureau target John Dillinger as one of the men to hunt down. Waiting for him to break Federal law they sort out several other mobsters, while Dillinger's bank robbing exploits make him something of a folk hero. Escaping from jail he finds Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson have joined the gang and pretty soon he is Public Enemy Number One. Now the G-men really are after him.
A seedy writer of sleazy pulp novels is recruited by a quirky, reclusive ex-actor to help him write his biography at his house in Malta.
Marvin, a young aspiring writer from New York, moves to California to write a novel. He ends up rooming with a chaotic, bohemian musician named Jay. Marvin finds himself inexorably drawn into the vibrant youth culture of San Francisco's Mission District as both Jay and himself watch their worlds disintegrate. They discover that each has a lot to learn from the other. Mission is a coming-of-age story casting a spotlight on a place and time, moments before artistic aspiring types yielded the Mission to the dotcom entrepreneurs.
A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected by the murder, including Becky and her sister, Julie, must contend with their own problems.
Lulu, a high class prostitute, receives constant visits from her neighbor Julian. He believes that she is his missing ex-girlfriend Mei Mei and begs her for a chance to start over again. Lulu rejects him, thinking that he is just making up stories to win her over. She tells him she never wants to see him again, but soon she misses him. It may be too late as she discovers that Julian is with somebody that looks exactly like her.
Alex, an ex-con working as muscle in a Vienna brothel, dreams of escaping with his girlfriend Tamara, who also works there. Their attempt to break free sets off a chain of events that links their fate with a rural police officer and his troubled marriage. As their lives intersect, a quiet struggle unfolds between guilt, grief, and the desire for redemption.
A cranky, retired author reluctantly embarks on a final book tour to help out a young publisher.
The story of writer Xiao Hong comes alive through memories of her great love affair, literary influence and escape from China during World War II.
A writer meets five widows on a train to Puri. As the six lives begin to intertwine, the theme of the taboos of widowhood emerge; but so, too, does a philosophy of life and hope for the future. The performers collectively won Best Actress at India's National Film Awards in 1964.
After a high-speed car chase, Madea winds up behind bars because her quick temper gets the best of her. Meanwhile, Assistant District Attorney Josh Hardaway lands a case that's too personal to handle: that of a young prostitute and former drug addict named Candace, also a childhood friend. When Candace winds up in jail, Madea takes the young woman under her protective wing.
Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.
In 1930s Texas, pulp fiction master Robert E. Howard is introduced to Novalyne Price, a teacher with aspirations of becoming an author herself, and they begin a unique relationship filled with conversation and imagination. Although the possibility exists for romance, Howard's obsession with his work and dedication to his sick mother leads Price to look elsewhere for love, leaving Howard feeling betrayed and alone.