[2] Shot and edited in the Direct Cinema style, the filmmakers follow Cohen through his hometown of Montreal, Quebec, as he moves from poetry readings at McGill University, Cohen's alma mater, to a television appearance with his friend and fellow poet Irving Layton and host Pierre Berton, to his childhood home sitting with his mother, to his "three-dollar-a-night hotel room" in a shady part of the city.
In the footage they watch, a naked Cohen writes "CAVEAT EMPTOR," Latin for "buyer beware" on the wall next to the bathtub.
Unlike contemporaneous Direct Cinema documentaries on similar subjects, most notably Lonely Boy, by Roman Kroitor and Wolf Koenig, Cohen is given licence to comment on the proceedings, as and even after they happen.
Where in Lonely Boy Paul Anka is only the subject, and often the dupe, of Koenig and Kroitor's investigation of fame and artifice, in Ladies and Gentleman..., Cohen is in on the con as a collaborator and co-conspirator.
To this end, Cohen is allowed to manufacture irony, along with the directors throughout the film, including as he watches himself fumble with horizontal blinds in his hotel room and comments ironically, "I was always good with my hands."