A wrong turn down a one-way street in the shadow of the Sunset Strip's Chateau Marmont leads Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia, Soldier's Girl) on a journey that will nearly drown him in the intoxicating, impulsive, maddening, tragic, and transformative nature of love.  Despite the success of his latest film, Nyswaner has been fighting depression and contemplating self-destruction.  "I don't want a mediocre, empty life," he tells his psychiatrist-acupuncturist-herbalist after half-heartedly attempting to hang himself with a belt.  Then, on a trip from his home in upstate New York to Los Angeles, he meets and falls for world-weary Johann, a Latin-quoting, leather-clad hustler with a vague European accent.  In the next year Johann will teach him many things:  how to make a crack pipe out of a soda can, how to come down from a crystal meth binge, how to walk down a city street as if he owns it, how to beg for "more" in Hungarian, and how to lose onself utterly in reckless passion.  If he can survive it, loving Johann might be his salvation.