The Idiot

The Idiot is a sometimes psychedelic, sometimes tragic, often goofy romp, with its main character based loosely (with apologies to Fyodor Mikhailovich) on Prince Myshkin of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. It is 1970s Portland, Oregon, where Nick Benucci, a formerly powerful Los Angeles attorney, recently freed from a high-class private mental institution, has set up shop to give his talents to those he deems his losers. He has teamed with his erstwhile partner, Jose Canusi, who has his own ideas of success, hangs with his best friend, an overweight dentist, Hamilton Royds, and is trying to set up a concert by the the increasingly hot rock group Heavy Merge. He also manages to fall in love with the wife of one of the most influential men in Portland. Nick is on a ride on a doomsday machine of his own making even as he tries to convince himself everything he does is done for all around him, while all around him see only the phantoms Nick thought he had left far behind.