The screenplay by Howard A. Rodman is based on the magazine article Professor Sea Gull and the book Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell.

Earning occasional financial support from poet E. E. Cummings, portrait painter Alice Neel, Village Vanguard founder Max Gordon, art gallery owner Vivian Marquie, and even the sculptor Gaston Lachaise, Gould is able to secure a nightly room in flophouses until an anonymous benefactor arranges accommodations in a residential hotel for him.

However, with the passage of time, as Gould becomes irritatingly intrusive and demanding, disrupting the ordinary life Mitchell shares with his photographer wife and their two daughters, the journalist begins to question if the elderly man's 9 million-word opus actually exists or is merely a figment of his imagination.

The film's soundtrack includes a number of period songs performed by Dinah Washington, Count Basie, Josephine Baker, Woody Herman, Charlie Parker, Perry Como, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Geoffrey Menin among others.

"[7] Edward Guthman of the San Francisco Chronicle stated, "[Ian Holm] nails one of the best roles of his career ... [Tucci] directs with quiet affection and rare restraint.