Part-time pest-control man and full-time drug addict Bill Lee (Weller) seeks escape from his troubled existence in 1953 New York and flees to Interzone (a hallucinatory version of Tangiers) where reality and fantasy have merged. It's a strange, surreal landscape inhabited by mugwumps, half-alien, half-insect creatures, man-sized centipedes, carnivorous typewriters and bizarre humans. Compelled to make sense of this alien territory, he writes a book...

Mimi, a poor seamstress, and Rodolphe, a struggling playwright, fall in love. When Mimi attempts to help Rodolphe get his play produced, he suspects her of infidelity and she leaves him. Later, a severely ill Mimi returns to the now successful Rodolphe and dies.