[1] The film opens in a fine restaurant with Toback meeting with a Hollywood producer, pitching him the idea for a movie.

It will be a movie “about the people who are in it…about creation and disintegration, God, life, love, sex, crime, madness, death, everything.” The restaurant scene "nods at My Dinner With Andre, the classic model of a raconteur's film.”[2] Toback tells the producer that the idea was inspired by his epiphany that the origin of the cosmos was an “orgasmic explosion of God.” The producer expresses skepticism and reluctance to finance the project.

The film begins to introduce the interview subjects, about 20 individuals who are only identified by their professions—the Astronomer, the Medical Student, the Filmmaker, the Gangster, the Girl, the Humorist, the Writer, the Restauranteuse, the Survivor, and so on.

The Astronomer discusses the creation of the universe with a singularity, the Big Bang, and the development of the stars and galaxies.

"Toback, too, reveals himself in the process of asking his questions, poking fun, in his encounter with the Model (Sheila Kennedy), at his image as a lothario by lounging provocatively close to his attractive subject.

The Filmmaker identifies himself as Don Simpson, producer of Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop, and Top Gun.

Toback begins to ask more poignant questions as the film moves along, which prompts some of the subjects to become more pensive.

He tells of his violent history, how he "gave a lot of guys beatings," how he was shot on the steps of a church by rival gang members as a kid, the love and insane jealousy he experienced for a woman and for whom he left his wife and children.

Ten years after the film, he would become famous for portraying Paulie Gualtieri in the HBO series The Sopranos.

The most poignant moments of the film are with the Survivor, a Jewish Hungarian woman who survived the death camps of World War II.

She describes how as a young girl she and her mother were sent via train in a cattle car, packed with others, to Auschwitz where her sense of identity was erased.

“What kind of people want to reveal their most profound thoughts and fears on screen?, asked Caryn James of the New York Times.

“As it turns out, people who ultimately say very little, who are at best amusing, occasionally affecting and more often simply bland.”[5] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote, “The startling thing about James Toback’s documentary The Big Bang is how much fun it is.” He added, “it’s a refreshing change of pace, both from Toback’s other movies and from the lockstep commercialism of today’s Hollywood.