Kirby Dick's provocative documentary investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America rates films, revealing the organization's underhanded efforts to control culture. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment and exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence.

A judge gives con-man Tom Turner a choice—a jail sentence, or a year of honest work. But when he gets a job in the U.S. Post Office's dead letter office, he starts a Good Samaritan con by answering letters written to God. His seemingly virtuous work inspires his co-workers to do the same, but their good deeds are frowned upon by the postmaster general—and the cops.

The outrageous, groundbreaking comic Lenny Bruce, whose iconoclastic material in a conservative era got him into tragic trouble, is profiled by a close friend, Fred Baker, who prefers to remember the laughs Lenny Bruce's memory evokes instead of the tears. By presenting Bruce's landmark skits on the Steve Allen Show, his failed TV pilot episode and a candid interview with Nat Hentoff, Bruce's genius and anguish show through the dramatic and tragic trajectory of his career from aspiring artist to hunted "lawbreaker".