Studio head Joe Mulholland promises his dying producer and mentor, Saul Gritz, to adapt a popular sex manual into a film, despite his better judgment. Unable to figure out how to turn the nonfiction book into a narrative movie, Mulholland enlists the services of Herb Dorman, a screenwriter of popular romantic films with a bad marriage, and volatile director Sid Spokane to help him create a movie.

A time capsule of the L.A. comedy scene in the 1970s, "Diary of a Young Comic" casts Richard Lewis as a fictionalized version of himself - a young New York comic who comes out to Los Angeles to seek his fame and fortune.

This is the story of how one of the famous movie roles was cast. The role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind.

Based on the controversial off-Broadway musical comedy revue, "Oh! Calcutta!" is a series of musical numbers about sex and sexual mores. Most of the skits feature one or more performers in a state of undress, simulating sex, or both. The show sparked considerable controversy at the time because it featured extended scenes of total nudity, both male and female. The title is taken from a painting by Clovis Trouille, itself a pun on "O quel cul t'as!" French for "What an arse you have!".

Fledgling comic Benjy Stone can't believe his luck when his childhood hero, the swashbuckling matinee idol Alan Swann, gets booked to appear on the variety show he writes for. But when Swann arrives, he fails to live up to his silver screen image. Instead, he's a drunken womanizer who suffers from stage fright. Benjy is assigned to look after him before the show, and it's all he can do to keep his former idol from going completely off the rails.