Michael McGee

Two down and out friends living in Venice, California, struggle in social and economic deprivation. They reach the point where they can't go on. Escalating pressures force them to hatch a wild get-rich-quick scheme in a last ditch attempt to solve "all of their problems". The far-fetched scheme involves one of them being bitten by a rat in a major supermarket with the fantastical hopes of winning an outrageously huge settlement. What transpires is a perfect example of "the best laid plans of mice and men" where reality trumps delusion and, in one comic turn after another, depravity gives way to humanity.

Pitted against each other since youth and raised to believe true artists are only formed through suffering, the sisters reunite after years of estrangement. One sister learns authenticity, the other regret, but neither escapes the sins of their father.

In a small Michigan town where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry, the McClusky family are the power brokers between the police, criminals, inmates, prison guards and politicians in a city completely dependent on prisons and the prisoners they contain.