A tale of murder, crime and punishment set in the summer of 1949. Ed Crane, a barber in a small California town, is dissatisfied with his life, but his wife Doris' infidelity and a mysterious opportunity presents him with a chance to change it.

When a doubting young boy takes an extraordinary train ride to the North Pole, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery that shows him that the wonder of life never fades for those who believe.

A woman enters a bar and asks for a bit of conversation, but what she gets in return is a bunch of bad pickup lines sung to her by a cowboy and the bartender singing the cowboy's virtues.

Set in 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer gets into a car accident, loses his memory and settles down in a small town where he is mistaken for a long-lost son.

"Meat Loaf" Aday is an overgrown Texas youngster, the son of a gentle woman dying of cancer and an alcoholic, abusive father. Tormented by his father and schoolmates over his size, he strikes out on his own after his mother's death, in an impossible task to prove himself to the world and to himself. A chance audition for a musical leads him to join forces with composer Jim Steinman, and together the two make music history with the operatic rock album "Bat Out of Hell." But the demons that drive Meat Loaf aren't assuaged by success, and eventually he must come to terms with them.

Tormented and bedridden by a debilitating disease, a mystery writer relives his detective stories through his imagination and hallucinations.