Set in New York City during the 1940s and 50s, a time when artists and writers often gathered together in a neighborhood called Greenwich Village, this is the true story of the friendship between famed New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell and bohemian Joe Gould, a self-proclaimed scholar of the NYC streets. Yankee born and Harvard educated, the disheveled Gould's life's work is "The Oral History of Our Time," a transcription of hundreds of conversations, remarks, and essays about what he has seen and heard. Meanwhile, he's chronically jobless and depends on contributions to the "Joe Gould Fund" from friends and well-wishers. After Mitchell writes about him in The New Yorker, Gould becomes a minor celebrity. Their relationship grows more intense over the years as Mitchell becomes the keeper of Joe Gould's secret.