Charlie Kaufman writes & directs this darkly comic narrative-within-a-narrative drama about a theatre director, Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who is producing a new play on Broadway. In his attempt to say something real in a powerful new way, he gathers an ensemble cast together in a Manhattan warehouse & instructs them to live out their ordinary lives in a studio replica of New York City. As the constructed city grows & starts to take on a life of its own, Caden's own life goes into free fall: his relationships with his wife Claire (Michelle Williams), ex-wife Adele (Catherine Keener) & daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein) are all in ruins, & even his therapist, Madeline (Hope Davis), has an agenda at odds to his own. As he becomes more & more involved with his masterpiece, the lines between the world he has created & the real world become hopelessly blurred.