Moguls, The (2005) - Synopsis

Meet Andy Sargentee, (JEFF BRIDGES). A man at the end of his rope after a humiliating visit to the mansion of his son’s new stepfather. He is a guy we all know. He spends most of his time in the neighborhood bar with a group of regulars. He says the one thing to his boss that is guaranteed to get him fired, but it is the one thing that everyone else in the office wishes they had said. And his biggest fear, since his divorce, is that he will lose the love of his son, Billy. He wants to be able to provide for Billy, buy him cool presents and have him to stay on weekends, but he can’t even keep a job as a night security guard.

He sits in Floyd’s Bar, the only watering hole in town, surrounded by his friends and neighbors desperately trying to conjure up that One Great Idea that’s going to solve all his problems and make him a richer man. The trouble is that Andy’s great ideas usually mean dragging these friends and neighbors into some hair brained scheme like selling vitamins and they end up losing their life savings.

Today they’re particularly nervous. Whatever plan he cooking up is going to be a humdinger so they are desperately trying to distract him with free drinks and conversation but Andy is in the zone. He flashes through the paper looking for inspiration, head spinning round the bar, eyeballing the window of the video store across the street, back to the paper, the posters, the paper. Geez, there’s sex everywhere!!

That’s it! Of course. It’s so obvious. THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE A PORNO!



Andy recruits his relatively normal best friend Barney (TIM BLAKE NELSON), who is hopelessly in love with Helen (GLENNE HEADLY) who doesn’t realize Mr.Right is right in front of her. He also needs someone who knows something about film so he recruits the local video store film-geek Emmett (PATRICK FUGIT) to be the cinematographer. Next he needs a writer/director and gets his friend Some Idiot (a name even his mother calls him) (JOE PANTOLIANO), who has taken enough film classes at the junior college to think he has what it takes. And finally Otis (WILLIAM FICHTNER), who can’t imagine anything better than being on a porno set and wants to executive produce and Moose (TED DANSON), who is obviously gay but spends most of his time boasting about his various straight conquests.