Four stories that examine the everyday lives of ordinary Los Angelenos: "ISLAND IN THE RIVER" introduces Happy, a withdrawn teenage girl with a passion for spray paint and Hip Hop. On the concrete banks of the Los Angeles river, her graffiti masterpiece is being created, a vision of Payasa, the weeping clown. At home, her mom and mom's boyfriend fight over money. At school, she is chased home by boys who hate her otherness. But in the river, there is yet another "other", Sal Marino homeless and so disconnected from normal life that she can not hear him while she paints her private vision. That is, until it is too late. "A WARM PLACE" introduces Avo and his wife Allegra who lived with their daughter across the river on the East Bank. "Lived" because their daughter recently drowned in the river, and with it the very spark that made their married life possible. Together, they must find a way back to "a warm place." "THE HEALER" introduces Ridley who is called home to Los Angeles to attend his dying mother in a hospice, with his jazz blues guitar playing. Feeling abandoned by his sibling with the responsibility of seeing to his mother, Ridley is surprised by an enigmatic voice of comfort that permeates his single-room-only walkup. "HUMPHREY" introduces Humphrey an aging pensioner living alone with the memories of his wife Ethel. His daily walk always brings him to Ethel's grave for lunch and a nap, and lets the lives of Happy and Avo cross his path.
—anonymous
