Successful New York attorney Sam Leibowitz travels to the South in 1933 to defend nine young black men accused of raping two women on an Alabama freight train.

Doyle Simms grows up across the Hudson from NYC and flees his toxic family to attend a film program there. After a bumpy first year he returns more determined than ever to become a storyteller and figure out his place. Financial setbacks force Doyle to find creative "rent-controlled living" and begin a dual life living out of Penn Station while going to school. We follow Doyle over his college years as he begins to build relationships with several colorful characters such as Saul, a homeless book dealer who shows him the ropes and his own brand of street philosophy, and Allyson, a beautiful, struggling actress he carefully begins to pursue and fall for. Doyle begins to find a weird balance and begin to build a home, but the pressure of maintaining his worlds begins to crack the façade and he's forced to confront his past family demons and reconcile the person he wants to be with the person he is.

Dr. Raymond Forrester, professor of psychology at UCLA, takes student and Hollywood starlet Dorothy Crowder to a Malibu hotel of questionable reputation. The two ingest LSD, sent in a mysterious package to Forrester, and become some of the first Americans to go on a psychedelic experience. The experience takes a turn for the deadly during New Year's Eve 1960 and now the duo must rediscover reality or be trapped in an endless cycle of sex, drugs and murder in 'paradise.'