Elliott (James Franco) seems to be living a kind of absurdly charmed hipster dream life: His books are selling, and his agent (Cynthia Nixon) is selling more proposals for him. (“I got twice what you asked for!” she chirps.) He rides motorcycles and lives in a large apartment with a sign that reads, “If you leave me, I’m coming with you” on the door. He has scraggly facial hair, the requisite tattoos, and a passel of book reviews that say he has spun the pain of his childhood into gold on the page.
“We’re all victims of our father,” he writes on his laptop at one point, standing up next to his fancy coffee grinder.