A hapless talent director named Danny Rose, by helping a customer, who gets dragged into a love triangle involving the mob. His narrative is told in flashback, an anecdote shared amongst a set of comedians over lunch in the Carnegie Deli of New York. Rose's one-piece gift agency represents innumerable incompetent entertainers, such as a snobby tap dancer, and also one marginally talented one: washed up lounge singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), whose livelihood is on the muster.