The picaresque plot is about Tanino, an Italian liberal arts student who falls in love with a young American tourist he meets in Sicily and decides to track her down in the United States.

[1] Gaetano Mendolìa, nicknamed Tanino, is a native of the fictional Castelluzzo del Golfo, a small seaside resort in the province of Trapani, Sicily.

Tanino decides to travel to the US with the pretext of returning Sally's camera to her but in addition to avoiding Italian military service.

Eventually, he leaves them and finally meets up with Sally and her "perfect" White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family, confounding them with his antics.

Later, Tanino escapes the clutches of the FBI by riding on the roof of a train and arrives in New York City where he meets his idol, director Seymour Chinawsky.