Joseph Mitchell was a writer for The New Yorker who loved the city and had a penchant for creating profiles of urban dwellers. In 1942, he wrote a piece on Joe Gould, a Harvard-educated dropout from society who was working on The Oral History of Our Time, a book charting the dreams and schemes of ordinary people through their talk. Then in 1964, Mitchell wrote a second piece on his relationship with this bohemian who always solicited people for donations to "The Joe Gould Fund."
Stanley Tucci (Big Night) directs this inventive and flamboyant drama where most of the characters are driven by a glorious and maddening love of New York City. The literate screenplay by Howard A. Rodman is based on Mitchell's two New Yorker stories about Gould. Here at last is a movie that boldly dares to imagine the complexity, mystery, creativity, and contradictions of cosmopolitan life.
Mitchell (Stanley Tucci) lives with his wife Therese (Hope Davis), a photographer, and two daughters. The larger-than-life Joe Gould (Ian Holm in a tour de force performance) is a rambunctious bum who despite his shabby and unclean appearance has won the affection and support of fellow Greenwich Village dwellers e. e. cummings, Ezra Pound, artist Alice Neal (Susan Sarandon), and gallery owner Vivian Marquie (Patricia Clarkson). The always self-promoting author believes that his unpublished work is destined to be a classic. Gould calls it his wife, his wound, his rock, and his salvation. Mitchell only sees bits and pieces of it written in school composition books.
Once The New Yorker article appears, Joe Gould's status improves. He gets letters from fans and even receives a monthly stipend of $60 from a mysterious patron. Although Gould claims that 14 publishers have turned down his opus magnum, he purposely alienates Charlie Duell (Steve Martin), a publishing executive who is interested in The Oral History of Our Time. This cranky and lonely writer keeps showing up unexpectedly at the New Yorker offices even though Mitchell has moved on to other projects. Gould's delusions of grandeur trouble Mitchell and serve as a painful reminder of his own inner demons. In the end, the city's variety, depth, and essential mystery eludes the vain attempts by Gould and his biographer to capture it in words.