A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, tracing the rise and fall of multiple characters in an era of unbridled decadence and depravity during Hollywood's transition from silent films to sound films in the late 1920s.

During their last year at an Ivy League college in 1999, a group of friends and crew teammates' lives are changed forever when an army vet takes over as coach of their dysfunctional rowing team.