Joseph Mitchell (Stanley Tucci) encounters Joe Gould (Ian Holm), a Harvard-educated disheveled scholar of the New York streets. Gould’s life’s work is “The Oral History of Our Time,” a transcription of hundreds of conversations, remarks, and essays about what he has seen and heard.

After a story written by Mitchell about Gould appears in The New Yorker, Gould becomes a minor celebrity. As the dynamics between the two men shift, their relationship will consume Mitchell for years to come – as he becomes the keeper of Joe Gould’s secret.