An investment planner, bored with his job and his girlfriend, is given the opportunity to help open a new firm in South America. Once in the new country, he finds himself dealing with dictators and revolutionaries during a time of intense political upheaval, and to complicate his life further, he begins an affair with his new employer's wife.

Cletus is a compulsive liar. He prefers the term 'fabrication' to lie though. When Cletus becomes a social worker he's assigned the case of a boy called Jorge (with a 'J') who was taken from his mother. Cletus sets out to reunite Jorge with his mother, but to do so he has to fabricate many a story to keep Jorge from being adopted. In search of the mother, Cletus meets and falls in love with a women's advice councillor.

A young divorcee struggles to provide for her young son and make a new life for herself in the backstage jungle of a TV talk show, becoming fast friends with its head writer whose job it is to see that its host, a woman-chasing egomaniac, stays at the top of the ratings.