Hal Hartley, known for films such as Trust, Amateur and Flirt directs this movie. The people in his odd comedies are part strong, silent types and part East Coast neurotics, who revel in their own contradictions. Henry Fool (Ryan) materialises in a Queens neighbourhood where a sanitation worker Simon Grim (Urbaniak) is literally lying in the street waiting for something to happen. Henry has everything and too much of it. He is, he tells Simon, an artist, the author of a huge, unpublished tome called 'My Confession', and he encourages Simon to lift himself from lethargy and create his own masterpiece.

Simon composes a long poem that some people hate but others champion. Simon becomes a literary celebrity, and in gratitude to his mentor says he will insist that his publisher also issue Henry's opus. But then he reads it. The second half of the film is set seven years down the track when Simon is a Nobel prizewinner and Henry a garbageman in a sad marriage. We never hear a line of either Henry's or Simon's work. Be warned that this is yet another long, wordy movie, with weird explosions amid the philosophising and philandering. But it is pristinely acted and has been said to perfectly reflect 'our common aches and dreams'.