Stein, a writer of detective fiction, is in Hollywood adapting his own novel about the detective Stone into a screenplay. The story begins with Stone in the hospital with a bullet wound in his shoulder commenting on how it happened. The scene shifts as a man sitting at a typewriter appears on stage. The man is Stein and the story he is telling is the film Stein is writing. The scene shifts back and forth between the Hollywood cast and the film cast... and the action shifts between the film and the real people of the story. Stein's personal life falls apart as his wife accuses him of selling out and she returns to New York. Eventually he realizes he has sold out and he reclaims his values.