Fritz Brown is an ex-LAPD, recovering alcoholic who now splits his time repossessing cars for a used car lot and staffing his one-man private detective agency. When a filthy caddie named Freddy "Fat Dog" Baker wanders into Fritz's office one day, flashing a wad of cash, Fritz is hired to follow Fat Dog's kid sister Jane, who is holed up with a Beverly Hills sugar daddy named Sol Kupferman. Kupferman is a 70 year-old bag man for the mob, and Fat Dog claims that "Solly K" is up to something evil that may harm Jane. The trail leads Fritz to an encounter with his dark past in the person of Haywood Cathcart, current head of LAPD internal affairs and the person who kicked Fritz off the police force.

Take a walk on the seamy side of town, where you can’t tell the difference between the bad cops and the crooks. Bob Holt, a corrupt detective knee-deep in kickbacks, has an uneasy partnership with a drug-addicted cop and an even shakier alliance with a notorious mob syndicate. When Holt pours the youngest mob brother into a cement freeway structure, it sets in motion a twisted tale of revenge.

Ten satirical sketches written by George C. Wolfe use drama, comedy and music to examine black stereotypes and express the need for African-Americans to preserve their culture by remembering their painful but glorious heritage. Presented as museum "exhibitions," the songs and sketches address the problem of having to renounce one's history and suppress anger in order to assimilate.

Peter Finley is a cable-TV newsman who is led into a network of sin and conspiracy when he has interest in a missing anchorwoman's story.

"Los Angeles" is the story of Jojo, a young mute, who thinks she hears God calling her to save the Baby Jesus. She packs five angels in a shoe shine kit and takes a one-way trip to Tampa, Florida, where she is picked up by Cash, an escaped convict. The two hit the road with the FBI on their tail. At different cities along the way, Jojo opens her shine kit, and the angels perform. Will Cash get to freedom? Will Jojo save the Baby Jesus? God only knows.

Mobsters, ex-cons, grad students and other desperate persons see their various fates converge in the Mojave Desert.

The story of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in 1950s Chicago, and the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's musical legends, including Muddy Waters, Leonard Chess, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Chuck Berry.

An emotionally dysfunctional ukulele minstrel lands a gig at a nursing home where he strikes up an unlikely relationship with an ancient jazz chanteuse and awakens from a lifetime of loneliness and inconsequence.

When a colossal tectonic shift causes the sea level to start rising, a microbiologist gathers the DNA of as many species as she can, while the military creates an "ark" in a desperate attempt to preserve life on Earth.

After a three-year stint in prison, an unreasonably optimistic middle-aged man returns to his stagnant neighborhood to win back his girlfriend only to find that she and his family have done what they always wanted to do — forget he exists.