A struggling writer is hired by the head of a major film studio to perform a simple task: travel down Sunset Boulevard and shut down a film stalled far too long in post-production. The director of the film, Curtis, has not been seen for over a year Principal photography ended long ago and yet the film remains unfinished with its creator sealed away in a private mansion
somewhere beyond the boulevard. Curtis is rumored to be unraveling in his obsessive pursuit of perfection. As the writer moves west, Sunset Boulevard itself becomes a river of stories, myths, and warnings. Everyone has a version of Curtis: a visionary, a madman, a prophet of cinema, a cautionary tale.
What begins as professional curiosity deepens into fixation. Each mile brings new obstacles and temptations and distractions as seductive as the city itself, but the writer presses forward, increasingly consumed by the need to understand the mind of the man at the end of his journey. Curtis becomes less a director than an idea: the embodiment of artistic purity pushed beyond all human limits.
What awaits the writer is a blend between art, madness, and the dangerous ecstasy of total clarity. At once a dark Hollywood fable and a psychological bildungsroman, Sunset River explores the cost of creation in a city that devours its dreamers, and it walks the perilous line between vision and annihilation.