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A dead man emerges from a body bag and takes us back to 1949. Armed with lofty Hollywood ambitions, Joe Gillis (Tom Francis) finds out the hard way that the entertainment industry is not for the faint of heart. Even so, he makes a pact with fellow writer Betty Schaefer (Sydney Jones) to write a screenplay together. Living in penury, he evades the agents trying to repossess his car due to late payments by driving into the garage of a dilapidated mansion along Sunset Boulevard which turns out to be the residence of washed-out has-been Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger). The aging film star lives in solitude and is served unconditionally by her protective butler Max Von Meyerling (David Thaxton) whose unwavering support includes writing fake fan mail to her to make her feel that she is still relevant. When she finds out that Joe is a writer, her eyes light up and she takes him under her wing, asking him to edit a script she wrote for her comeback film.